[Peace-discuss] More about The Lobby

[David Green]

I'll wait for an explanation as to why and how Charles Schumer undermines U.S. interests. In fact, he supports them. Ideological unity regarding support for Israel is a centerpiece of American policy in the ME, agreed to by both parties. Any genuine support for a viable Palestinian state, which would dispel the myth of "endangered Israel," will have to be accompanied by a "change of course"; that is, a pragmatic re-assessment of alliances, such as was done with Libya. If this is done vis a vis Hizbollah/Syria, then we will magically see an accommodation with the Palestinians regardless of the Israel Lobby, which will indeed support it, and moreover will claim that that was what they supported all along, and that they were the ones who thought of it.

DG



----- Original Message ----
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com>
Cc: Brussel Morton K. <mkbrussel at comcast.net>; peace-discuss Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 5:00:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] More about The Lobby

Because reasonable people know it wouldn't get anywhere. US policy is determined
by the interaction of power centers within the American elite, not by the agents
of a Mideast state, working against those interests (= "the US national interest").


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 4:41 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>> wrote:
> 
> Israel has its own vicious agenda, as Chomsky is among the first to point
> out. But it would not be able to enact it without the US.
> 
> Other people write well on this matter, but Chomsky has been doing it
> particularly well, for a long time.  It's hard to equal "Fateful Triangle:
> The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians" (1983), updated ten years
> ago, and that's only one among many.
> 
> Chomsky points out that the debates over the Lobby "are paralyzing. They have
> no implications for activism, except one. If the claims are correct, then
> I’ve been wasting my time for years in talking, writing, organizing,
> activism. I should instead put on a tie and jacket and go to the corporate
> headquarters of Intel, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and a host of other major
> corporations investing in Israel, and should explain to them, politely, that
> they are harming their interests by doing so, and should use their political
> and economic power to put the lobby out of business, as they can do in five
> minutes. No one adopts that tactic. But why?"
> 
> 
> 
> Why indeed?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> 
> 
> You dodge the point that Ray McGovern, and others, are making in a kind of obsession to  attack the U.S.—and now seemingly Obama policies— (which in other contexts deserves your condemnation), overlook the influence of the Lobby who the more astute (like McGovern) recognize as pernicious and effective, and excuse Israeli policies by suggesting that they are simply puppets of the U.S.  It's bait and switch, once more.
> 
> Your concluding paragraph leaves the impression that Israel does not have its
>  own vicious agenda relative to the Palestinians, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, or Hamas, which seems to me arrant nonsense.
> 
> Stop worshipping Chomsky; even he has his blinders.. --mkb
> 
> On Mar 11, 2009, at 9:52 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> If it weren't such an indication of pathological denial and refusal to note the simple facts, it would be funny -- the insistence of American liberals that the US crimes in SW Asia are the fault of the Bad Jews and their Lobby
> who have somehow manipulated and misled the Good Obama.
> 
> What will it take for them to recognize that the murderous policies that the
> US follows from the Mediterranean to the Indus are American (not Israeli)
> policies, pursued in the interest of American elites?  Obama had been
> feverishly auditioning to work for them for years: see "The Audacity of Hope"
> (an honestly self-referential title).  He's the jumped-up button-man of the
> American ascendancy, a Mob lawyer whose client is the greatest Mob of all --
> the American ruling class.
> 
> Israel sold its soul to the American Devil years ago -- ca. 1967 -- for the mess of pottage (about $4B/yr) that the US provides. The result has been the
> corruption of Israeli government and society -- perhaps predictable, because
> of the roots of that society in what has been accurately termed a
> "settler-colonialist" ruling class.
> 
> --CGE
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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