Just how much power does Israel have over us anyway?

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.

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9 Comments

  1. Ol' E Cross
    Posted March 12, 2009 at 10:48 pm | Permalink

    Kind of makes you understand how all those countries where we impose or dispose leaders feel.

  2. Brackinald Achery
    Posted March 13, 2009 at 8:06 am | Permalink

    Amen to that.

  3. Posted March 13, 2009 at 8:42 am | Permalink

    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.

  4. Paw
    Posted March 13, 2009 at 1:31 pm | Permalink

    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

  5. Oliva
    Posted March 13, 2009 at 4:53 pm | Permalink

    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).

  6. Looder
    Posted March 16, 2009 at 7:31 am | Permalink

    Good editorial in the LA Times – “Zionism is the Problem.”

    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenreich15-2009mar15,0,6684861.story

  7. Meta
    Posted March 16, 2009 at 10:11 am | Permalink

    New from Tom’s Dispacth:

    http://www.alternet.org/audits/131715/is_this_last_gasp_for_the_israel_lobby_and_the_neocons/

    Is the Israel lobby in Washington an all-powerful force? Or is it, perhaps, running scared?

    Judging by the outcome of the Charles W. (“Chas”) Freeman affair this week, it might seem as if the Israeli lobby is fearsome indeed. Seen more broadly, however, the controversy over Freeman could be the Israel lobby’s Waterloo.

    Let’s recap. On February 19th, Laura Rozen reported at ForeignPolicy.com that Freeman had been selected by Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to serve in a key post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC). The NIC, the official in-house think tank of the intelligence community, takes input from 16 intelligence agencies and produces what are called “national intelligence estimates” on crucial topics of the day as guidance for Washington policymakers. For that job, Freeman boasted a stellar resumé: fluent in Mandarin Chinese, widely experienced in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War, and an ex-assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration…

  8. Patrick
    Posted March 21, 2009 at 12:50 am | Permalink

    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.

  9. Francis
    Posted April 1, 2010 at 10:15 am | Permalink

    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”.

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