I don’t know if you’ve been following along, but it looks as though lobbyists working on behalf of Israel were successful in killing the appointment of Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. as Chair of the National Intelligence Council. Freeman, for what it’s worth, isn’t going down quietly. Following is a clip from his blistering statement:
…The libels on me and their easily traceable email trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired, still less to factor in American understanding of trends and events in the Middle East. The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors…
His crime? Saying things like, “Israel is driving itself toward a cliff, and it is irresponsible not to question Israeli policy and to decide what is best for the American people.”
“The audacity!”
“To suggest that we should question Israel.”
I don’t feel like debating Israeli foreign policy at the moment, and hopefully this doesn’t turn into a big Israel-bashing thread, but I do think it’s worth noting that their lobby has enough power to dictate who our senior intelligence officers are, and thereby influence the analysis of data critical to our nation’s security.
9 Comments
Kind of makes you understand how all those countries where we impose or dispose leaders feel.
Amen to that.
It certainly appears the Israeli interests along with underlying greedy profiteers in the US cannot exist without each other. Israel is a convenient tool for spreading terror amongst the Middle Eastern nations and keeping the fear policies at a high pitch and ensure the flow of $billions into the coffers of the war manufacturing machine.
Wasn’t it on this very site that I first learn of the Israeli art student mystery?
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/05/07/students/index.html
I like what one smart person said on NPR a little while back about congressional leaders mistaking “special” relationship with “exclusive” relationship (between Israel and the United States).
Good editorial in the LA Times – “Zionism is the Problem.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009mar15,0,6684861.story
New from Tom’s Dispacth:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/131715/is_this_last_gasp_for_the_israel_lobby_and_the_neocons/
What is worse than all that, I heard a few days ago that it was really David Ben-Gurion who invented St. Patrick’s Day.
The US is scared of Israel. After all who controls the US banks?. Who controls Hollywood? and which country carries the greatest weight down the corridors of power in the Pentagon?.If you critisize or come across as anti-semitic we we have the holocaust to keep us all feeling guilty. Out of the ll million people who died in German concentration camps during the second world war how often do we here about the 5 million non-Jewish people who lost their lives? And how ironic for a people who were so cruelly treated by the Nazis are treating their neighbours the Palestinians today? As someone once said ” I shall not be mocked”.