Has Israel Effectively Colonized the United States?

If Americans Knew, January 22, 2018

Israel “enjoys” its special relationship with the United States; the US is apparently stuck in a special relationship with Israel.

Israel may be small, but so was Britain when it controlled India. Israel doesn’t need to control everything in the US, just the important things: AIPAC (with the help of Christian Zionists) controls Middle East policy and keeps aid money flowing by controlling all branches of government; the label “anti-Semite” is used as a weapon; media is kept from any meaningful criticism of Israel; and “exceptionalism” allows the Jewish State to waive rules that every other country on the planet must obey.  

by Badruddin Khan, from Counterpunch September 7, 2016

We normally think of colonizers as large countries, and the colonized as smaller and weaker nations. But this is not always the case. Colonization does not require occupation. It merely requires the subjugation of the colonized. With ambition, superior information and calculation, and the right mindset, smaller nations can (and have in the past) colonized and dominated larger and nominally more powerful countries.

India was successfully colonized by tiny Britain in the 18th century. The vehicle for colonization was the East India Company. It was only after the Indian mutiny that Britain acted directly and sent in troops to establish the British Raj. For the next 200 years India was drained of its wealth, its economy was restructured to support England’s needs and global ambitions, and its people militarized to fight and die on behalf of the British crown. The Indian leaders who remained were willing participants in this venture; those who felt otherwise were destroyed or marginalized.

In a similar vein, Israel today is in the process of colonizing the United States, which is vital to its global projection and exercise of power. The steps Israel is taking are visible to all (as was the case with British designs on India) and yet it is remarkably difficult to connect the dots while such a takeover is in process. Or, to do anything about it.

Colonization does not mean total control of everything

It means total control of what matters. The British were interested in Indian wealth, and a standing army of Indians willing to die for their wars. They couldn’t care less about India’s internal petty politics that did not directly or indirectly impact their mission. An effective “divide and conquer” strategy pit Indians against each other and discouraged any kind of coordinated response, or sedition. The British leveraged their “outsider advantage” to objectively collect data with which to calculate and coordinate which Indian princes to support in battles, and which to connive with. Like pieces on a chessboard, Indian leaders exhausted themselves through internal battles, and were prevailed to seek cover provided by the British. Small amounts of leverage can change outcomes (as the Israeli lobby AIPAC has shown, in its path to dominating Congress and regional/local US politics), and over the years the British were able control and align India to the British crown. Less than 10,000 English controlled colonial India, which at that time had a population of 300 million.

It is instructive to note that while there were relatively few white Englishmen, a class of local “brown sahibs” was developed, to actually run things. This elite class was educated in English ways, and rewarded monetarily and through social stature. Britain was too small a country to ultimately matter by itself, but by leveraging India the English could pursue their global ambitions. India was the “Jewel in the (British) Crown”.

Today, Israel has effective control of US policy in the Mideast, and similar goals. Much has already been written about Israel’s control of Congress. Israel is now edging towards control over the US Executive Branch, with both presidential candidates supported by billionaires whose #1 agenda is Israel (Saban and Adelson). The Supreme Court will be one-third Jewish, and justices have community ties and families. As Israel demonstrated through its successful intimidation of Judge Goldstone, jurists are human and everyone has their price.

[if Obama’s nominee had been approved, the Supreme Court would have been almost half Jewish(Jewish Americans are 2.2 % of the population), with no protestant Christians (46.5 % of the population). There are still no Asian Americans (5.6 % of the population) on the highest court in the land.]

Israel’s “occupation force” in the US has long included AIPAC as well as the dense network of community organizations at the State and local levels [see here]. Through relationships that have been developed over years and with unlimited funds at their disposal, the “Israel Lobby” ensures that votes go the right way, and that opponents are squashed when Israel demands unity. In 2003 at the onset of George Bush’s Iraq war this occupation force was multiplied through the inclusion of Christian Zionists.

Critics of the Israel Lobby are marginalized by whatever means available, including being called anti-Semitic. The Lobby has been effective in securing massive aid packages for Israel even though Israel’s per-capita GDP exceeds that of several European nations. Israeli insiders permeate the US government, and it is US policy that there be “no light” between the countries so that where Israel is concerned there is no debate. Israel’s top priorities are the top priorities of the US. There are of course instances where this does not happen (such as, Iran) but the direction points to a tighter colonial noose in the years ahead.

The media matters: establishing beliefs and narratives

The colonizer must be a “Sacred Object” above criticism or objective review, and dangerous critics must be either destroyed or marginalized. No Englishman in India spoke of the mother country and its ways with anything other than reverence, even though during periods of the British Raj England was in turmoil. Within England there was a free press and active debate; but this was not permitted in India, about Britain. The only acceptable posture was that of reverence.

Today Israel has a free press, and it is easy to read translations of the Hebrew language press. Israeli commentators compare Netanyahu to Hitler, Israel is called a racist apartheid state based on evidence, and the extreme violence against and ongoing abuse of Palestinians is well documented. But, these same conversations are forbidden in the US. No newspaper would report them, nor are they permitted in polite company. Transgressors are labeled anti-Semitic, whether Jewish or not.

In the US today, boycotts are seen as a permitted non-violent form of free speech. Citizens have the right to boycott whatever they want from wherever they want without risk of penalty. The sole exception is Israel.

Exceptionalism

The British conquests were “for God and country”, and therefore justified. The British were superior, the natives inferior. This setup the moral justification for the mayhem wrought by the British as they colonized Asia and the Mideast. At that time, all men were not born equal, and it took the US Constitution to establish that self-evident fact.

Israel is seeking to revert to those days, by acting as though Arab lives are inferior, and (more recently) promoting Islamophobia to serve their Christian Zionism wing. In 2003, uber Zionist Bernard Lewis posed as “Arab expert” and advised president Bush that the only language Arabs understood was force. This helped to justify the attack on Iraq, as part of a neocon plan to “creatively destroy” the sovereign Arab states in Israel’s neighborhood, to facilitate Israel’s dominance. The Nazis at Nuremberg were shown greater respect than Saddam and his Ba’at leadership, and the contempt for Arabs was in full display.

Today, Israeli Jews are in the process of destroying Palestinian society and erasing Palestinian culture, with impunity. Churches and mosques are both being destroyed, though Israel would prefer to keep the spotlight on mosques, to fan a religious war between Islam on one side, and Christians and Jews on the other.

While the Israeli press records and debates Israel’s bad behavior, Americans are forbidden to publicly debate Israeli behavior critically.

Three Recent Examples:

1/ During the Congressional debate around the Iran deal president Obama had negotiated, Senator Chuck Schumer said he would vote “against”…not because of any independent analysis, but because this is what Netanyahu wanted. In other words, he publically said that he would follow the Israeli prime ministers’ direction, over that of his own president. Because, as he said, he was “guardian of Israel”.

A sitting US senator proclaimed allegiance to a foreign country, and nobody asked him to resign!

2/ The Israeli Prime Minister addresses the full US Congress to lobby against the Iran nuclear deal. When the deal does go through, Israel demands more US aid! And, is likely to get it. One can try various definitions of “blackmail” to see which one fits.

The US president is impotent in dealing with Israel. The so-called “pro Israel lobby” effectively functions like an agent of Israel. The Israel lobby is playing the role of the East India Company, in Britain’s colonization of India.

3/ The Israel Lobby interferes massively in US foreign policy in the region. The “mainstream” media such as NYT spins events to reflect Israel’s views (bureau chiefs are typically Jewish and resident in Israel). The Iraq war cost $1 trillion+ and cost thousands of US lives, created ISIS, and was pushed by the Lobby. Israel benefits from the distraction.

The colonization of the US by Israel is becoming increasingly explicit. It is now increasingly seen as “normal” to have a double standard: one for Israel, another for the rest of the world. The boycott-Israel movement is an example of that: you can boycott anything or anyone, but not Israel. This is true power, and the face of colonization.

Source

American Jews Are Funding the Far-right Dream of Greater Israel. We Have to End This – Now

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ed note–the reader should prepare thyself for a schmorgas-board of the typical schmoozing that is part and parcel of all liberal Jewish clap-trap, where ‘good Jews of conscience’ from the left moralize how it is ‘not nice’ to oppress the Palestinians and how what Israel is/has been/always will be doing is a flagrant violation of the ‘peace and justice’ that flows through the vascular system of ‘true Judaism’ like sewage flows through a 6-inch drain pipe.

The reason for posting it is to highlight that indeed the entire ‘Greater Israel’ paradigm is the real deal, and despite the fact that our unesteemed Hebress does not go into any details as to what ‘Greater Israel’ portends, the fact of the matter is that indeed, the idea of ‘Greater Israel’ is a matter of fact, despite the denial-based hasbara campaign that is put into motion by Judaic interests plying their ‘by way of deception, we shall make war’ protocols whenever some mouthy Gentile decides to bring this fact up for discussion.

Haaretz

We now know far more about how far American Jewish dollars embitter Palestinian lives, target Israel’s critics and entrench the occupation. It’s time to say: Enough

This week, the Jewish Federations of North America is hosting its annual General Assembly in Israel, and this year’s theme is “We need to talk.”

The conference program is packed with high-profile speakers, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to incoming Jewish Agency head Isaac Herzog, to business, NGO, and communal leaders. The “need to talk” is a recurring theme across the Jewish community today; if we could just have more civil discourse with one another, all of our problems would go away.

However, the Federations’ professed commitment to civility belies a sad reality: it’s committed to civil discourse as long as any mention of Palestinians and the system of discrimination that they live under – and particularly any talk of changing that reality – is excluded.

So yes, we do need to talk. We need to talk about the extent of the American Jewish Establishment’s support for the occupation and the damage done by those claiming to represent us. And the events of the last two weeks have been a sore reminder that we need to move beyond talk into action.

During the two weeks that 22-year-old Palestinian-American student Lara Alqasem sat in an Israeli detention center, challenging an order to revoke her visa to study at Hebrew University and deport her from the country, we learned that Israeli authorities were getting their “evidence” from the McCarthyist blacklist site Canary Mission, which anonymously publishes dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestinian activists in order to ruin their careers.

At the same time, we learned that the shadowy Canary Mission received hundreds of thousands of dollars from multiple major Jewish communal funds, including the Los Angeles Jewish Communal Fund. That Fund approved $250,000 to Canary Mission the same year that they blocked a $5,000 donation to IfNotNow, a grassroots, youth-led anti-occupation movement (which I co-founded).

In San Francisco, Canary Mission was in good company with a host of shameful, extremist, Islamophobic hate groups which also received donations from their local Federations. And who received these shadowy donations on behalf of Canary Mission? A Haaretz report revealed that it was far-right Kahanist activists living in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, funding Canary Mission to silence dissent against Israeli policies is just the tip of the iceberg. A new report released by IfNotNow – “Beyond Talk: The 5 Ways the American Jewish Establishment Supports the Occupation” – shows us how, in word and deed, the entire Jewish communal apparatus defends and deepens injustice in Israel/Palestine. We should not be shocked, but we should be angry.

Jewish establishment organizations fund the dispossession of Palestinians, lobby politicians to empower Israel’s march toward full-blown apartheid, and celebrate the Israeli politicians leading that march. Many Jewish educational institutions erase and deny Palestinian narratives to keep kids ignorant of reality – and punish critical voices.

In so doing, the Jewish communal apparatus plays a significant role in enabling Israel’s occupation and the Israeli government’s attempts to silence dissent. When Israel threatened to deport Alqasem for her alleged involvement in a campaign to boycott Sabra hummus, it is not just the Israeli government but the Jewish communal establishment, which funded the blacklist that landed her in detention, and participates in the witch hunt against BDS activists, that must be held accountable.

The American Jewish community’s active participation in injustice goes far further. Unquestioning support for, and defense of, the Netanyahu government has emboldened the Israeli far-right’s war to gradually dominate all of “Greater Israel.” The Israeli right knows it can do whatever it wants on either side of the Green Line without so much as a word from American Jews – or, of course, from the Trump White House.

This is a war of attrition that stretches from the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank, where Ahed Tamimi was jailed for eight months for slapping an Israeli soldier, to Nazareth in Israel’s north, where poet Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, spent over two years under house arrest, and then three months in jail, for a poem she posted on Facebook.

Both Dareen and Ahed are Palestinian women who refused to quietly accept Israel’s oppression of their people, and they have been punished severely for it. Sadly, too many in our community don’t even know Dareen or Ahed’s names, much less the names of the millions of Palestinians whose lives are embittered by our communal dollars.

Israel’s drift to the far-right is part of a global move towards illiberalism. But American Jewish establishment organizations have been the Israeli government’s crucial partners, funders, enablers and defenders.

Our exemption of Israel from our commitment to universal civil and political freedoms has helped make space for the deeply anti-democratic, racist alliance between Trump and Netanyahu to thrive. We must not forget the standing ovations that candidate Trump was greeted with at the largest gathering of American Jews (and their Christian evangelical friends) in the country, AIPAC’s annual policy conference.

This is what should be discussed at the GA this week- but we already know it’s absent from the program. The JFNA’s public calls for civility are just a cynical diversion tactic.

To be sure, there were calls to defend Lara Alqasem from liberal corners of the community. However, taking one principled stand in an extreme moment hardly dents the fortified walls around Israel, both literal and intellectual, that the Jewish communal establishment has helped build, through years of financial and political support for successive Israeli governments.

Talk is cheap, but teshuva takes work. We should demand nothing less than full repentance from our institutions. Not simply public apologies, but active condemnation and promises to shift communal priorities and dollars to projects that advance freedom and equality.

Federations and other communal organizations that don’t should be condemned and protested. We must stop working with groups that silence dissent and facilitate human rights abuses, in violation of the principles of our people. We must work to remedy the harm we have caused.

Until then, activists from IfNotNow will continue to protest on the doorsteps of Jewish establishment organizations – because the crisis of American Jewish support for the Israeli occupation is too great to ignore, and because closed-door meetings and civil dialogue have not and will not drive the change that our community needs.

Some find our tactics disruptive and off-putting. We say we are committed to waking our community up – and to do that, we will do whatever it takes.

Finally a US lawmaker calls israel an apartheid state

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Jennifer Bing

Hearing from constituents emboldened a member of congress to speak up against Israel’s military detention of Palestinian children.

Oren Ziv ActiveStills

There is not much to celebrate taking place on Capitol Hill these days.

Nearly two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, US advocates for Palestinian rights may be rightly discouraged from believing that any progress can be made to change the status quo of unconditional support for Israeli government policies and actions. Many issues of concern – the status of Jerusalem (and relocation of the US embassy), the rights of refugees, the blockade of Gaza and the expansion of Israeli settlements – continue to undermine any prospects for a just peace.

We continue to see progressive elected members of Congress and candidates for office shy away from criticizing US policies when it comes to Israel.

US aid to Israel continues to gain widespread Congressional support without any concern for the well-documented human rights violations committed by the Israeli military. State and federal laws have been introduced against the right to nonviolently protest the occupation of Palestine through boycotts and divestment.

But not everyone in Congress is staying silent.

Perhaps the most vocal champion of Palestinian rights in the US House of Representatives is Betty McCollum, elected to Congress since 2000 from St. Paul, Minnesota. Since 2015, she has led efforts in Congress to address the rights of Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation.

Nearly a year ago she introduced HR 4391, the first bill in Congress which seeks to certify that US tax dollars do not fund Israeli military detention and abuse of Palestinian children.

“As an American and as a mother, I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial or a statement of moral courage to condemn a government that systematically arrests and abuses children,” McCollum said recently at a conference for Palestinian rights held in Minnesota.

“And, as a member of Congress, I don’t believe it should be a statement of political courage to say the US government should not spend $1 of our taxpayer funds supporting a brutal military detention system that abuses children. Now, in Congress you would think that makes common sense but yet this is not the case when it comes to protecting Palestinian children.”

McCollum also addressed the nation-state law recently passed by Israel, stating, “Friends, the world has a name for the form of government that is codified in the nation-state law – it is called apartheid.”

Actions make a difference

How did McCollum become so outspoken, even using a term such as “apartheid” to describe Israeli law? Why is she willing to be courageous on the issue of Palestinian rights given the dynamics in Washington, DC?

In her speech in Minnesota, she provided important lessons for those interested in effective advocacy.

Early in her remarks she highlighted the impact of constituent engagement.

“My constituents here in Minnesota’s Fourth District who send me to Congress, they expect me to fight for progressive values, human rights and policies that respect and elevate our shared human dignity,” she said.

“I am representative, a reflection of the people who elect me. So my work to promote peace, attack poverty, defend the rights of children and stand in solidarity with the oppressed, including the Palestinian people, is because I have the support of my wonderful constituents.”

While it may often seem pointless to call members of Congress, send emails, attend town hall meetings, and go on lobby visits in Washington, McCollum reminds advocates that these small actions can make a difference and are counted when officials make decisions.

Building alliances with other communities on shared interests, such as the welfare of children, and mobilizing together can have even greater impact than individual efforts. As McCollum began her advocacy for Palestinian children, local groups joined together in the Twin Cities to support her – and helped to keep the phone calls and letters supporting her work coming over these past few years.

Silence is never progressive

In Chicago earlier this year, several groups – led by the American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace – organized a town hall meeting with Luis Gutierrez, another member of Congress. The meeting was called to thank Gutierrez for signing onto the bill initiated by McCollum.

“We cannot continue to call ourselves progressive … and profess to be dedicated to peace in the Middle East … if when Palestinian children are arrested, jailed and even tortured we say nothing,” Gutierrez said at the town hall gathering. He compared his own feelings as a grandfather wanting to protect his grandson growing up in Chicago to how difficult it is for parents of Palestinian children who have no rights or ability to protect their children under occupation.

Gutierrez was emboldened to speak out due to a visit to Palestine and experiences his daughter had while studying in the country. While Congressional delegations to Israel are well-funded and seemingly a right of passage for all lawmakers, far fewer members of Congress go to the region to examine the impact of US policies on Palestinians living under occupation.

The example of Gutierrez highlights the value in organizing more opportunities for visits to the region for members of Congress, or at least providing them an itinerary to visit Palestinian organizations should they make such a trip – and following up when they return home.

Many of the supporters of HR 4391 come from districts where Palestinian rights advocates have been working for years to inform the public and their officials on the impact of unconditional diplomatic support and military aid to Israel.

Education and direct engagement with those most affected by injustice are essential in getting members to speak out.

McCollum’s views on the nation-state law were informed by her meeting with Aida Touma-Sliman, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

McCollum told the St. Paul crowd: “Aida is fighting Israel’s recently passed nation-state law which codifies separate and unequal. This is a standard of racism America rejects and outlawed more than 50 years ago.”

She added: “As Aida has written and told me, rather than working equally for the benefit of all citizens, irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity, or national affiliation, Israel will now promote the development of exclusive Jewish communities. Aida inspired me with her courage and determination.”

In recent years, many groups active on Palestinian rights have organized briefings and visits to Capitol Hill to deliver first-hand accounts and analysis to Congressional staff. Over the past few weeks, the Haifa-based Mossawa Center has toured the US, bringing with it the perspective of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

“We are often invisible in the conversations about the prospects for peace,” said Jafar Farah, Mossawa’s director, to an audience in Chicago. “We want to be members of a progressive front, cooperating together to gain our rights.”

In this moment there may be little political energy or interest beyond changing the balance of power in Congress on election day this November. But Palestinian rights activists should continue to prioritize campaigning for human rights in home districts and on Capitol Hill in the coming year – refining our advocacy skills and building our power to make change.

McCollum’s speech in Minnesota got activists on their feet, praising her courage for speaking up for Palestinian rights. May we continue the hard work of finding more members of Congress to follow her lead.

Jennifer Bing is director of the Palestine-Israel program for the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago and co-leader of the No Way to Treat a Child campaign.

Not just Canary Mission: SF Jewish Federation bankrolls these hate groups

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The Federation’s tax filings reveal a litany of radical-right and anti-Muslim groups that have received its support for years. The Federation says its review process has recently been strengthened but refuses to account for its funding of notorious Islamophobic hate groups.

File photo of an advertisement on a San Francisco public bus accusing the city of enforcing Sharia law, paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, which received funding from the SF Jewish Federation. (Steve Rhodes/CC 2.0)

Following the revelation last week in The Forward that the San Francisco Jewish Federation gave $100,000 to Canary Mission, the shadowy website that blacklists and intimidates students and professors who criticize Israel, the Federation assured its constituents that it was a “one-time grant” that would never happen again. But Canary Mission is just the tip of the iceberg.

An extensive review by +972 of the Federation’s tax filings shows that the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which the former controls and which it used to fund Canary Mission, have bankrolled an extensive list of extremist, far-right, anti-Muslim organizations in recent years.

The systematic pattern of financially supporting hate groups appears to also violate the SF Federation’s own guidelines, which specify that it will not fund organizations that “endorse or promote anti-Semitism, other forms of bigotry, violence or other extremist views.”

Among the extremist, radical right-wing, and anti-Muslim groups that received funds from the SF Federation, both directly and through the Diller Foundation, and some of which have received substantial and repeated grants over the years, include: Project Veritas, The AMCHA Initiative, The American Freedom Law Center, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, The David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the work of Islamophobic Dutch politician Geert Wilders (through the International Freedom Alliance Foundation). Others include the Clarion Fund, the Center for Security Policy (Frank Gaffney), the Middle East Forum (Daniel Pipes), the Tea Party Patriots Foundation, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Project Veritas, which the Federation gave $100,000 in 2016, is responsible for falsifying sexual misconduct allegations against Roy Moore last year to The Washington Post in hopes of entrapping the liberal mainstream media

The AMCHA Initiative, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the SF Federation and the Diller Foundation in recent years, operates similarly to Canary Mission, except that it primarily goes after faculty, not students.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years, has been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as promoting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant attitudes.

The American Freedom Law Center and Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative both target Islam as a threat to Western civilization. The former advances “anti-Sharia” legislation and filed an amicus brief in support of Trump’s Muslim ban. The latter, which has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group, was responsible for Islamophobic bus campaigns in several cities, and has been represented by the American Freedom Law Center.

+972 Magazine asked the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation about these grants and others that appear to violate its own guidelines against promoting bigotry, violence, and extremist views. The SF Federation’s senior director of communications, Kerry Philp, responded by email:

We review each grant recommendation at the time that it is submitted to the Federation, to determine if the organization adheres to the Federation’s granting guidelines. This applies to organizations across the political spectrum. We aim to make the best decisions with the information that we have at the time. Because organizations are dynamic, an organization that previously received a grant from the Federation may not be in compliance with the Federation’s grantmaking guidelines today, and vice versa. Also, per our statement, we strengthened the implementation of our review process in 2017 and continue to be committed to executing our grant review with a standard of care in regard to our guidelines.

Philp added that the Federation does indeed deny grants when they violate its guidelines but would not address any of the grants to the organizations listed in this article or why they were approved.

The San Francisco Jewish Community Federation is one of the largest Jewish charities in the United States with a budget of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. Furthermore, it is located in, and presumably represents, one of the most progressive cities and communities in the United States. Whether the SF Federation’s financial support of radical, right-wing, Islamophobic, bigoted, and McCarthyite groups aligns with that community’s values is ultimately up to its members.

israeli (terror state) interference in U.S. election #israelgate

Israel Did It, VT Was Right All Along: Trump Campaign’s Rick Gates Yields NewData Point on Israeli Interference

Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates requested proposals from an Israeli intelligence firm to manipulate social media with fake accounts in order to help secure a favorable outcome for Donald Trump in the Republican primaries and later the general election.

The company — Psy-Group — is stacked with former Israeli intelligence operatives and offered up solutions using social media tactics traditionally alleged to have been employed by Russia during the election.

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Gates, a deputy to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, was indicted in the special counsel probe into potential collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian Federation and later pleaded guilty to charges unrelated to Russia.

In the case of Psy-Group, “Rick Gates was approached by someone named Joel Zamel, who is very well connected to the Israeli lobby in the United States,” investigative journalist Max Blumenthal told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear.

Psy-Group “focuses on elections around the world and specifically interfering in them,” he added.

“What they pitched to Rick Gates — as a representative of the Trump campaign — at an August 3rd, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr., was a $3 million persona management campaign that would have consisted of the creation of sock puppet accounts to influence Republican National Convention delegates against Ted Cruz and to carry out an intelligence operation — an unspecified intelligence operation, presumably including gray propaganda — against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle,” Blumenthal said.

The news that Gates was willing to work with an Israeli firm to create a pro-Trump troll farm is the latest in the “Israelgate” saga, which some journalists have identified as more substantial than “Russiagate,” the latter not having produced an ounce of evidence of collusion between Trump’s team and the Kremlin.

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 11, 2018

“What we have here is one of a dizzying array of cases of Israeli direct interference in America’s political system and more specifically in the 2016 elections,” Blumenthal told Loud & Clear hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.

For example, Manafort colluded with an Israeli government official to spread allegations linking then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s rival Yulia Tymoshenko to antisemitism (although that was prior to the 2016 election).

‘Nothing to See Here!’ as ‘Russiagate’ Reveals the ‘Wrong’ Collusion

Gates pleaded guilty in February to making false statements to the FBI after telling the agency that the topic of Ukraine had not been discussed at a meeting between himself, a lobbyist and a member of Congress. He also pleaded guilty to conspiring against the United States by failing to register as a foreign agent for his Ukraine lobbying work.

During Manafort’s trial in August, Gates swore under oath that his partner’s work included the drafting of an “Engage Ukraine” strategy to bring the country into the European Union — in essence, not work that could be seen, as the mainstream media has repeatedly insisted, as pro-Russia.

In the interim period between Trump’s November 2016 election victory and his January 20 inauguration, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn — himself indicted in the so-called “Russia probe” — met with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and later lied to the FBI about the meeting. That fact alone led many an uncritical mind to conclude that it evidenced Trump-Russia collusion. But the meeting was perfectly legit; Flynn was indicted for lying about what happened. According to Flynn’s charge sheet, he met with Kislyak to discuss a UN vote on Israeli settlements, pressuring them to vote in favor of Israel.

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 18, 2018

Later, the New York Times reported that the meeting was set up because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked the Trump transition team to help lobby for them around the vote. While perhaps not a crime in itself, lobbying Russia on behalf of Israel definitely rises to the level of “coordination,” which Mueller is ostensibly on the hunt for.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the July 2016 Russia probe with the mandate of investigating “any links and/or coordination” (in a word: collusion) between Trump and Russia as well as any matters that “may arise directly from from the investigation” keeps “coming back to Israeli interference even though his job is supposed to be related to Russian interference, and it’s because of the preponderance of examples of Israeli interference,” Blumenthal said.

Moreover Flynn and Donald Trump Jr. reportedly met in the fall of 2016 with members of the intelligence firm Wikistrat, which specializes in social media and intelligence gathering. “Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm,” wrote journalist Ken Klippenstein, who had internal documents from the company leaked to him.

— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) September 12, 2018

Also during the election, an Israeli lobby group created fake Facebook pages which sparked real-life protests against a Palestinian poet touring US college campuses. Compared to the fake protests allegedly created by Russia, the Israeli-backed ones received next to no coverage in American media despite having been created during the same period of time.

It has also been revealed that Trump’s team hired an Israeli spy firm — also stacked with former intelligence agents — called Black Cube. The company was hired in May 2017 — just a few months after Trump’s inauguration — to spy on former President Barack Obama’s architects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran Nuclear Deal. Black Cube made headlines just months prior to the May 2018 revelation for conducting “dirty ops” against women who have accused Hollywood media mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct.

“What you have here,” Blumenthal said, referring to the Psy-Group revelation, “is basically a massive plan to influence America’s election through the kind of subterfuge we have heard Russia is planning, but it extends well beyond the kind of hacking that Russia is accused of.”

“It’s just one more example of so many cases of Israeli interference.”

American "democracy", The Best Government Money Can Buy

Best Government Money Can Buy

Philip M. GIRALDI

Very few Americans know who Sheldon Adelson is and fewer still appreciate that, as America’s leading political donor, when he speaks the Republican Party listens. By virtue of his largesse, he has been able to direct GOP policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel, which might well be regarded as his true home while the United States exists more as a faithful friend that can be produced at intervals whenever Israel finds itself in need of a bit of cash or political cover.Adelson’s recent successes in translating his political donations into policy favorable to Israel have included shifting the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting aid to Palestinians, ending the Iranian nuclear monitoring agreement and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization’s diplomatic office in Washington. All those Trump Administration measures were reportedly worked out privately by Adelson speaking directly with the president.

Adelson’s activities in buying politicians reflect what he believes, he reportedly having said that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” Nor does his world view include much concern for the country that has sheltered him and made him wealthy. He served in the US Army in World War 2 and has said that he regrets having done so, as he would rather have worn an Israeli army uniform. He also expressed his desire that his son might become an Israeli Army sniper.

Adelson benefits from his exceptional access to the White House to the detriment of actual American interests. A New York Times article “Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump’s Washington,” states that he “enjoys a direct line to the president” and meets the president monthly “in private in-person meetings and phone conversations.” He has been delighted with the openly expressed threats emanating from the Administration’s key foreign and national security policy spokesmen regarding Iran. He would like to see the United States go to war with the Iranians to destroy their government and bring about some kind of regime change, and, judging from recent developments, he just might get what he seeks, which could easily have catastrophic consequences for the entire region and beyond.

Adelson is somewhat unhinged on the issue of Iran and has even called for dropping a nuclear bomb on a desert region of the country as a negotiating tactic to show “we mean business” so Washington could then “impose its demands [on Iran] from a position of strength.” If Iran continued to resist, Adelson would to drop the next one on Tehran. If Tehran were to be nuked millions of Iranians would die, which doesn’t bother Adelson one bit. Such a development would, in Adelson’s opinion, be good for Israel, which is his primary concern.

Adelson’s power over policy makers is also evident in what the White House does not do. Israeli snipers have shot dead at least 143 unarmed Arab demonstrators in Gaza without so much as a word of condemnation coming out of Washington. Indeed, the Donald Trump Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has gone out of his way to defend the killings and also to support the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Adelson is also widely believed to have had a hand in personnel changes in the White House. He has used his money and influence to advance the careers of United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while also arranging the removal of H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson for “being anti-Israeli” and not sufficiently willing to go to war with Iran. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the only actual adult remaining in the room when foreign policy is discussed, is believed to be the next target for removal.

How does Adelson do it? Money talks. He is worth an estimated $35 billion. His fortune came from casinos both in the US and in China, which some might consider to be promotion of vice. To buy and maintain the Republican support for right wing Zionist policies he has donated what is for him pocket change, $55 million so far this year in support of GOP candidates in the Midterm elections. In 2016, he gave large sums to the Trump campaign and to other Republicans, donating $35 million to the former and $55 million to two top Republican PACs — the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund.

In America’s corrupt political culture, a monster like Sheldon Adelson can buy both a White House and Congress on behalf of a foreign government for a paltry $150 million or so. It is a reasonable investment for him given his views, as through him Israel is able to control a large slice of American foreign policy while also receiving billions of dollars each year from the US Treasury. And for those who think it would be different if the Democrats were in charge, think again. The Democrats have their own Adelson. His name is Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media magnate who has said he is a “one issue guy and my issue is Israel.” He is also the largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party.

How the tentacles of the US military are strangling the planet

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By Vijay Prashad

The overreach of the U.S. military provides incentive for it to treat every conflict as a potential war.

Earlier this year, in Itoman (Okinawa, Japan), a young girl—Rinko Sagara (age 14)— read out of a poem based on her great-grandmother’s experience of World War II. Sagara’s great-grandmother reminded her of the cruelty of war. She had seen her friends shot in front of her. It was ugly. Okinawa, a small island on the edge of southern Japan, saw its share of war from April to June 1945. “The blue skies were obscured by the iron rain,” wrote Rinko Sagara, channeling the memories of her great-grandmother. The roar of the bombs overpowered the haunting melody from the sanshin, Okinawa’s snakeskin-covered three-string guitar. “Cherish each day,” the poem goes, “For our future is just an extension of this moment. Now is our future.”

This week, the people of Okinawa elected Denny Tamaki of the Liberal Party as the governor of Okinawa. Tamaki’s mother is an Okinawan, while his father—whom he does not know—was a U.S. soldier. Tamaki, like Okinawa’s former governor Takeshi Onaga, opposes the U.S. military bases on Okinawa. Onaga wanted the presence of the U.S. military removed from the island, a position that Tamaki seems to endorse. The United States has over 50,000 troops in Japan as well as a very large contingent of ships and aircraft. Seventy percent of the U.S. bases are on Okinawa island. Almost everyone in Okinawa wants the U.S. military to go. Rape by U.S. soldiers—including of young children—has long angered the Okinawans. Terrible environmental pollution—including the harsh noise from U.S. military aircraft—rankles people. It was not difficult for Tamaki to run on an anti-U.S. base platform. It is the most basic demand of his constituents.

But, the Japanese government does not accept the democratic views of the Okinawan people. Discrimination against the Okinawans plays a role here, but more fundamentally there is a lack of regard for the wishes of ordinary people when it comes to a U.S. base. In 2009, Yukio Hatoyama led the Democratic Party to victory in the national elections on a wide-ranging platform that included shifting Japanese foreign policy from its U.S. orientation to a more balanced approach with the rest of Asia. Prime Minister Hatoyama called for the United States and Japan to have a “close and equal” relationship, which meant that Japan would no longer be ordered about by Washington. The test case for Hatoyama was the relocation of the U.S. Futenma Marine Corps Air Base to a less populated section of Okinawa. His party wanted all the U.S. bases to be removed from the island. Pressure on the Japanese state from Washington was intense. Hatoyama could not deliver on his promise. He resigned his post. It was impossible to go against U.S. military policy and to rebalance Japan’s relationship with the rest of Asia. Japan, but more properly Okinawa, is effectively a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Japan’s Prostituted Daughter

Hatoyama could not move an agenda at the national level—likewise, local politicians and activists have struggled to move an agenda in Okinawa. Tamaki’s predecessor Takeshi Onaga— who died this August—could not get rid of the U.S. bases in Okinawa. Yamashiro Hiroji, head of the Okinawa Peace Action Center, and his comrades regularly protest the bases and in particular the transfer of the Futenma base. In October 2016, Hiroji was arrested when he cut a barbed wire fence at the base. He was held in prison for five months and not allowed to see his family. In June 2017, Hiroji went before the UN Human Rights Council to say, “The government of Japan dispatched a large police force in Okinawa to oppress and violently remove civilians.” Protest is illegal. The Japanese forces are acting here on behalf of the U.S. government.

Suzuyo Takazato, head of the Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, has called Okinawa “Japan’s prostituted daughter.” This is a stark characterization. Takazato’s group was formed in 1995 as part of the protest against the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen based in Okinawa. For decades now, Okinawans have complained about the creation of enclaves of their island that operate as places for the recreation of U.S. soldiers. The photographer Mao Ishikawa has portrayed these places, the segregated bars where only U.S. soldiers are allowed to go and meet Okinawan women (her book, Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa, collects many of these pictures from the 1970s). There have been at least 120 reported rapes since 1972, the “tip of the iceberg,” says Takazato. Every year there is at least one incident that captures the imagination of the people—a terrible act of violence, a rape or a murder. What the people want is for the bases to close, since they see the bases as the reason for these acts of violence. It is not enough to call for justice after the incidents; it is necessary, they say, to remove the cause of the incidents.

The Futenma base is to be relocated to Henoko in Nago City, Okinawa. A referendum in 1997 allowed the residents of Nago City to vote against a base. A massive demonstration in 2004 reiterated their view, and it was this demonstration that halted construction of the new base in 2005. Susumu Inamine, former mayor of Nago City, is opposed to the construction of any base in his city; he lost a re-election bid this year to Taketoyo Toguchi, who did not raise the base issue, by a slim margin. Everyone knows that if there were a new referendum in Nago City over a base, it would be roundly defeated. But, democracy is meaningless when it comes to the U.S. military base.

Fort Trump

The United States military has a staggering 883 military bases in 183 countries. In contrast, Russia has 10 such bases—8 of them in the former USSR. China has one overseas military base. There is no country with a military footprint that replicates that of the United States. The U.S. bases in Japan are only a small part of the massive infrastructure that allows the U.S. military to be hours away from armed action against any part of the planet.

There is no proposal to downsize the U.S. military footprint. In fact, there are only plans to increase it. The United States has long sought to build a base in Poland, whose government now courts the White House with the proposal that it be named Fort Trump. Currently, there are U.S.-NATO military bases in Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria with U.S.-NATO troops deployments in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The United States has increased its military presence in the Black Sea and in the Baltic Sea. Attempts to deny Russia access to its only two warm water ports in Sevastopol, Crimea, and Latakia, Syria, pushed Moscow to defend them with military interventions. A U.S. base in Poland, at the doorstep of Belarus, will rattle the Russians as much as they were rattled by Ukraine’s pledge to join NATO and by the war in Syria.

These U.S.-NATO bases provide instability and insecurity rather than peace. Tensions abound around them. Threats emanate from their presence.

A World Without Bases

In mid-November, in Dublin, Ireland, a coalition of organizations from around the world will hold the First International Conference Against US/NATO Military Bases. This conference is part of the newly formed Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases.

The view of the organizers is that “none of us can stop this madness alone.” By madness, they refer to the belligerence of the bases and the wars that come as a result of them. A decade ago, a CIA operative offered me the old chestnut, “if you have a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” What this means is that the expansion of the U.S. military—and its covert infrastructure—provides the incentive for the U.S. political leadership to treat every conflict as a potential war. Diplomacy goes out of the window. Regional structures to manage conflict—such as the African Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation—are disregarded. The U.S. hammer comes down hard on nails from one end of Asia to the other end of the Americas.

The poem by Rinko Sagara ends with an evocative line—now is our future. But it is, sadly, not so. The future will need to be produced—a future that disentangles the massive global infrastructure of war erected by the United States and NATO. The future, hopefully, will be made in Dublin and not in Warsaw; in Okinawa and not in Washington.

Vijay Prashad is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is also the author of Red Star Over the Third World (LeftWord, 2017) andThe Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016), among other books. 

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Benjamin Netanyahu Is No Friend to America

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by Scott Ritter

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on April 29. (State Department photo)

Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to the American spotlight. A career Israeli politician who attended school in the United States, he specializes in the kind of rhetoric that his American counterparts revel in—a kind of narcissism that’s more used car salesman than educator.

Netanyahu specializes in selling danger to the American people. This is an art he has practiced on numerous occasions, whether it be at the gatherings of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), his many appearances before the U.S. Congress, at televised events or during the general debate in the United Nations General Assembly, an annual gathering of global leaders and diplomats where each nation’s representative is provided the opportunity to address counterparts and the world on issues he or she deems to be of particular import.

Bibi (as he is known, affectionately or otherwise) delivered his latest address to the General Assembly on Sept. 27. Like others he had delivered previously, this one was a tour de force of angst, fear and anger with a nearly singular focus on the issue that has seized Netanyahu for more than two decades—Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.

In his 1995 campaign autobiography, “Fighting Terrorism,” Netanyahu, preparing to run for the office of prime minister of Israel, asserted that Iran was “three to five years” away from having a nuclear bomb. Bibi repeated this claim several times over the next 20-plus years, apparently unconcerned by the fact that his self-appointed timetable kept coming and going without the Iranian nuclear threat manifesting itself.

In September 2002, when he briefly found himself a private citizen, Netanyahu shifted his aim to Iraq, which he confidently asserted had a nuclear weapons program as he touted the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein from power—this during so-called “expert” testimony before the U.S. Congress. He was wrong on both counts, a fact that seems to slip the minds of those who continue to assign him a semblance of credibility given his proximity to Israel’s vaunted intelligence service.

As someone who spent four years (from 1994 to 1998) working closely with Israel’s intelligence service to uncover the truth about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, I can attest that Israeli intelligence is better than most at what it does, but far from perfect. For every good lead the Israelis delivered to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), for which I was working at the time, they provided a dozen or more that did not pan out. Their detailed analysis about the alleged organization and structure of Iraq’s covert nuclear program proved to be far removed from the truth. They got names wrong, affiliations wrong, locations wrong—in short, the Israelis made the exact same mistakes as any other intelligence service.

Iraq was a denied area, made less so by the presence of UNSCOM weapons inspectors like me who had unprecedented access to the most sensitive national security sites in the country. And still the Israelis got it wrong. They did so not because of “bad intelligence,” but because they, like the CIA and other intelligence agencies around the world, were privy to the vast amount of information and data collected by UNSCOM inspectors about the true state of Iraq’s proscribed weapons and related programs. They suffered from the same lack of imagination as did the others that postulated a nuclear-armed Iraq circa 2002, unwilling to consider the possibility that Saddam Hussein might be telling the truth about not having retained any weapons and related capabilities prohibited by the Security Council resolution. This same lack of imagination appears to fuel Netanyahu’s increasingly wild claims about Iran.

It is no secret that Netanyahu has opposed the Iran nuclear deal—officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action, or JCPOA—since the possibility of a negotiated solution to the stand-off between Iran and the rest of the world was put on the table by the Obama administration in 2012. He lobbied hard against the agreement, interjecting himself in American domestic politics in an unprecedented fashion to undermine the negotiations.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Netanyahu found a kindred spirit whose intellectual curiosity would not permit any effective challenge to the narrative constructed by the Israeli prime minister. And when Trump faced resistance from his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, he simply replaced them with more compliant persons, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton respectively.

Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA was facilitated not by any supporting brief from the U.S. intelligence community, which held fast to the assessment that Iran was fully compliant with its obligations under the JCPOA, but rather by intel provided by Israel that featured wild claims of an operation in the heart of Tehran; hundreds of thousands of documents purported to outline a nuclear program that Iran insisted did not exist. In April 2018, Bibi unveiled the existence of what he termed Iran’s “Atomic Archive” as he detailed some of its contents, allegedly recovered during an Israeli operation.

While Netanyahu’s dramatic presentation proved to be enough to help push Trump into withdrawing from the JCPOA the following month, it failed to convince the rest of the world that Iran was operating in bad faith when it came to declaring the totality of its nuclear program. One of the main reasons for this is that the tale put forward by Bibi simply didn’t add up. Documents he presented as being derived from the newly captured archive were recognized by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—which, along with supporting governments, is responsible for implementing the JCPOA—as matching those presented to the agency more than a decade ago. That cache of documents was allegedly recovered from a laptop computer sourced to an Iranian opposition group by Israeli intelligence.

At best, there is nothing new in these materials, and all the underlying issues alleged to have been “exposed” had already been discussed and rectified by the IAEA and Iran prior to the rectification of the JCPOA. At worst, Netanyahu was lying about the Israeli intelligence operation, and simply recycling old material—which may have been manufactured by Israel to begin with back in 2004—simply to provide political cover for Donald Trump.

Netanyahu spent much of his Sept. 27 address before the General Assembly detailing an alleged “Atomic Warehouse,” supposedly uncovered by Israeli intelligence in the heart of Tehran. As was the case with the “Atomic Archive” facility, Netanyahu made grand claims about Iranian malfeasance: The site contained “15 ship containers full of nuclear-related equipment and material,” along with “15 kilograms of radioactive material” that Iran allegedly evacuated from the site to evade detection. (Netanyahu seems to have overlooked the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy, prior to the JCPOA and in anticipation of such a scenario, “evacuated” nuclear material from one of its facilities during an exercise, only to have evidence of its existence uncovered by inspectors wielding the same detection capabilities as the IAEA.)

Netanyahu alleged that Iran was maintaining both an “Atomic Archive” and an “Atomic Warehouse” so that it could reconstitute its nuclear weapons program when the “time is right,” ostensibly when the sunset clauses of the JCPOA, which limit the number of centrifuges Iran can operate, expire. As with the “Atomic Archive” story, however, outside of Trump and his inner circle of anti-Iranian acolytes, informed American officials aren’t buying the Israeli leader’s tale, noting that Netanyahu has exaggerated the scope and scale of the warehouse in question. (These officials claim that the “material” being stored there is documentary in nature, a far cry from the “equipment” claimed by Netanyahu.)

Netanyahu bemoaned the fact that the world was promised “anywhere, anytime” inspections in Iran, and yet the IAEA has failed to take any steps to investigate the revelations provided by Israel. The reality is that the JCPOA promised no such thing. “Anywhere, anytime” was an artificial construct cobbled together by opponents of the deal by denigrating the investigatory capabilities of the IAEA. Moreover, the IAEA is intimately familiar with the quality of the intelligence information provided by Israel in the past, having spent months with Iran carefully deconstructing the claims contained within. The agency is hesitant to fall victim to Israeli exaggerations and falsifications again, and rightfully so.

More importantly, the JCPOA has a detailed mechanism in place to investigate claims such as those put forth by Israel. But by precipitously withdrawing from the JCPOA, the Trump administration has removed itself from that process. This means that Israel would need to turn to the Europeans, Russians or Chinese to plead its case. And the fact that neither France nor Germany nor the United Kingdom has picked up the mantle of Israel’s claims points to the inherent weakness of its intelligence. Netanyahu may be able to play siren to Trump’s Ulysses in order to crash America’s ship onto Iranian shoals, but the rest of the world is not following suit.

The American people should not tolerate this continued intrusion into their affairs by an outsider whose previous lies, prevarications and provocations helped get the United States entangled in one war, all the while advocating for our involvement in another. Bibi Netanyahu has a problem with telling the truth, and we give power to his words and deeds by not calling him out for what he truly is—a habitual liar with the blood of thousands of our fellow citizens on his hands. Netanyahu claims he is a friend of the American people. He is, in fact, the furthest thing from it.

Scott Ritter is the author of “Dealbreaker: Donald Trump and the Unmaking of the Iran Nuclear Deal,” published by Clarity Press, October 2018.

Scott Ritter