Zionism and American Jews
THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM IN THE MID EAST - Part II WHY JUDEO-CHRISTIAN SUPPORT WAR
Christian Zionism - Terror In Jesus' Name
LIBERATING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL By Paul Findley
The Israel lobby April 2002 Prospect magazine (UK)
Nixon, Billy Graham make derogatory comments about Jews on tapes
Web Links And Information On The Jewish Community A Map Of Zionism In America And Russia
Update: The spies who came in from the art sale
The Cost of Israel to U.S. TaxpayersTrue Lies About U.S. Aid to Israel
SHARON CROSSES BUSH - BUSH RUNS FOR COVER April 2 2002 at 7:57 PM Is Sharon Blackmailing Bush?
THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM IN THE MID EAST
Part II
WHY JUDEO-CHRISTIAN SUPPORT WAR
C. E. Carlson
The French author, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote Democracy in America when he traveled here in the first third of the 19th Century. In ringing tones he sang the praises of America's invulnerable strength and spirit. He attributed its greatness to its citizens' sense of morality... even with the abundant church attendances he observed in America. De Tocqueville wrote in French and is credited with this familiar quote: AMERICA IS GREAT BECAUSE SHE IS GOOD, AND IF AMERICA EVER CEASES TO BE GOOD, SHE WILL CEASE TO BE GREAT.
De Tocqueville could see the power of America, but he could not have known in 1830 that she was soon to be under an attack aimed at its churches and the very sense of morality that he extolled. First, there was a War Between the States, which scarred the powerful young nation in its strapping youth. A worse attack on America was to commence near the turn of the 20th century. This was the onset of an attack on American Christianity that continues unabated against the traditional, Christ-following church. This attack, which author Gordon Ginn calls "The final Apostasy," began with a small very wealthy and determined European political movement. It had a dream, and the American churches stood in its way.
The World Zionist movement, as its Jewish founders called themselves, had plans to acquire a homeland for all Jews worldwide, even though most were far from homeless, and many did not want another home. Not any land would do. World Zionists wanted a specific property that American Christians called "the Holy Land." But if these Zionists read "Democracy in America" or any of the journals of any of America's churches, which no doubt they did, they could not help but know that Jerusalem was not theirs to have. As self-proclaimed Jews, they were, according to the Christian New Testament, the persecutors of Christ and most of his early followers, and the engineers of his crucifixion. America's traditional churches in the 19th Century would never stand for a Jewish occupation of Jesus' homeland. World Zionist leaders initiated a program to change America and its religious orientation. One of the tools used to accomplish this goal was an obscure and malleable Civil War veteran named Cyrus I. Schofield. A much larger tool was a venerable, world respected European book publisher--The Oxford University Press.
The scheme was to alter the Christian view of Zionism by creating and promoting a pro-Zionist subculture within Christianity. Scofield's role was to re-write the King James Version of the Bible by inserting Zionist-friendly notes in the margins, between verses and chapters, and on the bottoms of the pages. The Oxford University Press used Scofield, a pastor by then, as the Editor, probably because it needed such as man for a front. The revised bible was called the Scofield Reference Bible, and with limitless advertising and promotion, it became a best-selling "bible" in America and has remained so for 90 years. The Scofield Reference Bible was not to be just another translation, subverting minor passages a little at a time. No, Scofield produced a revolutionary book that radically changed the context of the King James Version. It was designed to create a subculture around a new worship icon, the modern State of Israel, a state that did not yet exist, but which was already on the drawing boards of the committed, well-funded authors of World Zionism.
Scofield's support came from a movement that took root around the turn of the century, supposedly motivated by disillusionment over what it considered the stagnation of the mainline American churches. Some of these "reformers" were later to serve on Scofield's Editorial Committee. Scofield imitated a chain of past heretics and rapturists, most of whose credibility fizzled over their faulty end times prophesies. His mentor was one John Nelson Darby from Scotland, who was associated with the Plymouth Brethren and who made no less than six evangelical trips to the US selling what is today called "Darbyism." It is from Darby that Scofield is thought to have learned his Christian Zionist theology, which he later planted in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible. It is possible that Scofield's interest in Darbyism was shared by Oxford University Press, for Darby was known to Oxford University. (The History of Darbyism) The Oxford University Press owned "The Scofield Reference Bible" from the beginning, as indicated by its copyright, and Scofield stated he received handsome royalties from Oxford. Oxford's advertisers and promoters succeeded in making Scofield's bible, with its Christian Zionist footnotes, a standard for interpreting scripture in Judeo-Christian churches, seminaries, and Bible study groups. It has been published in at least four editions since its introduction in 1908 and remains one of the largest selling Bibles ever.
The Scofield Reference Bible and its several clones is all but worshiped in the ranks of celebrity Christians, beginning with the first media icon, evangelist Billy Graham. Of particular importance to the Zionist penetration of American Christian churches has been the fast growth of national bible study organizations, such as Bible Study Fellowship and Precept Ministries. These draw millions of students from not only evangelical fundamentalist churches, but also from Catholic and mainline Protestant churches and non-church contacts. These invariably teach forms of "dispensationalism," which draw their theory, to various degrees, from the notes in the Oxford Bible.
Among more traditional churches that encourage, and in some cases recommend, the use of the Scofield Reference Bible is the huge Southern Baptist Convention of America, whose capture is World Zionism's crowning achievement. Our report on Southern Baptist Zionism, entitled "The Cause of the Conflict: Fixing Blame".
Scofield, whose work is largely believed to be the product of Darby and others, wisely chose not to change the text of the King James Edition. Instead, he added hundreds of easy-to-read footnotes at the bottom of about half of the pages, and as the Old English grammar of the KJE becomes increasingly difficult for progressive generations of readers, students become increasingly dependent on the modern language footnotes. Scofield's notes weave parts of the Old and New Testaments together as though all were written at the same time by the same people. This is a favorite device of modern dispensationalists who essentially weigh all scripture against the unspoken and preposterous theory that the older it is, the more authoritative. In many cases the Oxford references prove to be puzzling rabbit trails leading nowhere, simply diversions. Scofield's borrowed ideas were later popularized under the labels and definitions that have evolved into common usage today--"pre-millennialism," "dispensationalism," "Judeo-Christianity," and most recently the highly political movement openly called "Christian Zionism."
Thanks to the work of a few dedicated researchers, much of the questionable personal history of Cyrus I. Scofield is available. It reveals he was not a Bible scholar as one might expect, but a political animal with the charm and talent for self-promotion of a Bill Clinton. Scofield's background reveals a criminal history, a deserted wife, a wrecked family, and a penchant for self-serving lies. He was exactly the sort of man the World Zionists might hire to bend Christian thought--a controllable man and one capable of carrying the secret to his grave. (See The Incredible Scofield and His Book by Joseph M. Canfield). Other researchers have examined Scofield's eschatology and exposed his original work as apostate and heretic to traditional Christian views. Among these is a massive work by Stephen Sizer entitled Christian Zionism, Its History, Theology and Politics. We Hold These Truths is grateful to these dedicated researchers. Our own examination of the Oxford Bible has gone in another direction, focusing not on what Scofield wrote, but on some of the many additions and deletions The Oxford University Press has continued to make to Scofield Reference Bible since his death in 1921. These alterations have further radicalized the Scofield Bible into a manual for the Christian worship of the State of Israel beyond what Schofield would have dreamed of. This un-Christian anti-Arab theology has permitted the theft of Palestine and 54 years of death and destruction against the Palestinians, with hardly a complaint from the Judeo-Christian mass media evangelists or most other American church leaders. We thank God for the exceptions. It is no exaggeration to say that the 1967 Oxford 4th Edition deifies--makes a God of--the State of Israel, a state that did not even exist when Scofield wrote the original footnotes in 1908. This writer believes that, had it not been for misguided anti-Arab race hatred promoted by Christian Zionist leaders in America, neither the Gulf War nor the Israeli war against the Palestinians would have occurred, and a million or more people who have perished would be alive today.
What proof does WHTT have to incriminate World Zionism in a scheme to control Christianity? For proof we offer the words themselves that were planted in the 1967 Edition, 20 years after the State of Israel was created in 1947, and 46 years after Scofield's death. The words tell us that those who control the Oxford Press recreated a bible to misguide Christians and sell flaming Zionism in the churches of America. There is little reason to believe that Scofield knew or cared much about the Zionist movement, but at some point, he became involved in a close and secret relationship with Samuel Untermeyer, a New York lawyer whose firm still exists today and one of the wealthiest and most powerful World Zionists in America. Untermeyer controlled the unbreakable thread that connected him with Scofield. They shared a password and a common watering hole--and it appears that Untermeyer may have been the one who provided the money that Scofield himself lacked. Scofield's success as an international bible editor without portfolio and his lavish living in Europe could only have been accomplished with financial aid and international influence. This connection might have remained hidden, were it not for the work of Joseph M. Canfield, the author and researcher who discovered clues to the thread in Scofield family papers. But even had the threads connecting Scofield to Untermeyer and Zionism never been exposed, it would still be obvious that that connection was there. It is significant that Oxford, not Scofield, owned the book, and that after Scofield's death, Oxford accelerated changes to it. Since the death of its original author and namesake, The Scofield Reference Bible has gone through several editions. Massive pro-Zionist notes were added to the 1967 edition, and some of Scofield's most significant notes from the original editions were removed where they apparently failed to further Zionist aims fast enough. Yet this edition retains the title, "The New Scofield Reference Bible, Holy Bible, Editor C.I. Scofield." It's anti-Arab, Christian subculture theology has made an enormous contribution to war, turning Christians into participants in genocide against Arabs in the latter half of the 20th century. The most convincing evidence of the unseen Zionist hand that wrote the Scofield notes to the venerable King James Bible is the content of the notes themselves, for only Zionists could have written them. These notes are the subject of this paper.
Oxford edited the former 1945 Edition of SRB in 1967, at the time of the Six Day War when Israel occupied Palestine. The new footnotes to the King James Bible presumptuously granted the rights to the Palestinians' land to the State of Israel and specifically denied the Arab Palestinians any such rights at all. One of the most brazen and outrageous of these NEWLY INSERTED footnotes states: "FOR A NATION TO COMMIT THE SIN OF ANTI-SEMITISM BRINGS INEVITABLE JUDGMENT." (page 19-20, footnote (3) to Genesis 12:3.) (our emphasis added) This statement sounds like something from Ariel Sharon, or the Chief Rabbi in Tel Aviv, or Theodore Herzl, the founder of Modern Zionism. But these exact words are found between the covers of the 1967 Edition of the Oxford Bible that is followed by millions of American churchgoers and students and is used by their leaders as a source for their preaching and teaching.
There is no word for "anti-Semitism" in the New Testament, nor is it found among the Ten Commandments. "Sin," this writer was taught, is a personal concept. It is something done by individuals in conflict with God's words, not by "nations." Even Sodom did not sin--its people did. The word "judgment" in the Bible always refers to God's action. In the Christian New Testament, Jesus promises both judgment and salvation for believing individuals, not for "nations."
There was also no "State of Israel" when Scofield wrote his original notes in his concocted Scofield Reference Bible in 1908. All references to Israel as a state were added AFTER 1947, when Israel was granted statehood by edict of the United Nations. The Oxford University Press simply rewrote its version of the Christian Bible in 1967 to make antipathy toward the "State of Israel" a "sin." Israel is made a god to be worshiped, not merely a "state." David Ben-Gurion could not have written it better. Perhaps he did write it!
The Oxford 1967 Edition continues on page 19: "(2) GOD MADE AN UNCONDITIONAL PROMISE OF BLESSINGS THROUGH ABRAM'S SEED (a) TO THE NATION OF ISRAEL TO INHERIT A SPECIFIC TERRITORY FOREVER" "(3) THERE IS A PROMISE OF BLESSING UPON THOSE INDIVIDUALS AND NATIONS WHO BLESS ABRAM'S DESCENDANTS, AND A CURSE LAID UPON THOSE WHO PERSECUTE THE JEWS." (Page 19, 1967 Edition Genesis 12:1-3) This bequeath is joined to an Oxford prophesy that never occurs in the Bible itself: "IT HAS INVARIABLY FARED ILL WITH THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PERSECUTED THE JEW, WELL WITH THOSE WHO HAVE PROTECTED HIM." and "THE FUTURE WILL STILL MORE REMARKABLY PROVE THIS PRINCIPLE"(footnote (3) bottom of page19-20Genesis 12:3) None of these notes appeared in the original Scofield Reference Bible or in the 1917 or 1945 editions. The state of Israel DID NOT EXIST in 1945, and according to the best dictionaries of the time, the word "Israel" only referred to a particular man and an ancient tribe, which is consistent with the Bible text. See "Israel," Webster's New International Dictionary 2nd (1950) Edition.
All of this language, including the prophecy about the future being really bad for those who "persecute the Jews," reflects and furthers the goals of the Anti-Defamation League, which has a stated goal of creating an environment where opposing the State of Israel is considered "anti-Semitism," and "anti-Semitism" is a "hate crime" punishable by law. This dream has become a reality in the Christian Zionist churches of America. Only someone with these goals could have written this footnote. The State of Israel's legal claims to Arab lands are based on the United Nations Partitioning Agreement of 1947, which gave the Jews only a fraction of the land they have since occupied by force. But when this author went to Israel and asked various Israelis where they got the right to occupy Palestine, each invariably said words to the effect that "God gave it to us." This interpretation of Hebrew scripture stems from the book of Genesis and is called the "Abrahamic Covenant". It is repeated several times and begins with God's promise to a man called Abraham who was eventually to become the grandfather of a man called "Israel:"
"[2] AND I WILL MAKE OF THEE A GREAT NATION, AND I WILL BLESS THEE, AND MAKE THY NAME GREAT; AND THOU SHALL BE A BLESSING:" "[3] AND I WILL BLESS THEM THAT BLESS THEE, AND CURSE HIM THAT CURSETH THEE: AND IN THEE SHALL ALL FAMILIES OF THE EARTH BE BLESSED." Genesis 12:3, King James Edition. It is upon this promise to a single person that modern Israeli Zionists base their claims to what amounts to the entire Mid-East. Its logic is roughly the equivalent of someone claiming to be the heir to the John Paul Getty estate because the great man had once sent a letter to someone's cousin seven times removed containing the salutation "wishing you my very best." In "Sherry's War," We Hold These Truths provides a common sense discussion of the Abrahamic Covenant and how millions of Christians are taught to misunderstand it.
It is tempting to engage in academic arguments to show readers the lack of logic in Scofield's theology, which has led followers of Christ so far astray. It seems all too easy to refute the various Bible references given in support of Scofield's strange writings. But we will resist the temptation to do this, because others have already done it quite well, and more importantly because it leads us off our course. It is also inviting to dig into Scofield's sordid past as Canfield has done, revealing him to be a convicted felon and probable pathological liar, but we leave that to others, because our interest is not in Scofield's life, but in saving the lives of millions of innocent people who are threatened by the continuing Zionist push for perpetual war. Instead, we will examine the words on their face. The words in these 1967 footnotes are Zionist propaganda that has been tacked onto the text of a Christian Bible. Most of them make no sense, except to support the Zionist State of Israel in its war against the Palestinians and any other wars it may enter into. In this purpose, Zionism has completely succeeded. American Judeo-Christians, more recently labeled "Christian Zionists," have remained mute during wars upon Israel's enemies in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and elsewhere. It is past time to stop the spilling of more blood, some of it Christian blood.
Now, for evidence of the intent of the Zionists deception of Christians, let us examine some Scofield's notes THAT HAVE BEEN ALTERED OR REMOVED by Oxford after his death. In 1908 Scofield wrote in 1908: "THE CONTRAST, 'I KNOW THAT YE ARE ABRAHAM'S SEED' - 'IF YE WERE ABRAHAM'S CHILDREN' IS THAT BETWEEN THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL POSTERITY OF ABRAHAM. THE ISRAELITISH PEOPLE AND ISHMAELITISH PEOPLE ARE THE FORMER; ALL WHO ARE 'OF THE PRECIOUS FAITH WITH ABRAHAM,' WHETHER JEWS OR GENTILES, ARE THE LATTER (ROM 9, 6-8; GAL, 4-14. SEE 'ABRAHAMIC COVENANT' GEN 15, 18, NOTE)." ( Scofield's 1945 page 1127, note to John 8:39) Compare that with the Oxford note substituted in the 1967 Edition: "8:37 ALL JEWS ARE NATURAL DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM, BUT ARE NOT NECESSARILY HIS SPIRITUAL POSTERITY, CP Rom 9-6-8, Gal 3: 6-14" (Note (1) P1136, Oxford 1967 Edition, note to Jn 8:37.) How, pray tell, can "all Jews" be "natural descendants of Abraham," a Chaldean who lived some 3000 years ago? Persons of all races are Jews and new Jews are being converted every day from every race. One might as well say all Lutherans are the natural descendants of Martin Luther; or that all Baptists come from the loins of John the Baptist. This note could only have been written by an Israeli patriot, for no one else would have a vested interest in promoting this genetic nonsense. Shame on those who accept this racism; it is apostate Christianity.
The original Scofield note was far out of line with traditional Christianity in 1908 and should have been treated as heresy then. Yet Scofield had failed to go far enough for the Zionists. Scofield clearly recognized what the book of Genesis states, that the sons of Ishmael are co-heirs to Abraham's ancient promise. Did not Scofield say "the Israelitish people and Ishmaelitish people are...the natural posterity of Abraham"? The Oxford Press simply waited for Scofield to die and changed it as they wished. And what is it that Scofield said that did not satisfy the Zionists who rewrote the Oxford 1967 Edition? The answer is an easy one. Most Arab and Islamic scholars consider Arabs in general and the Prophet Mohamed in particular to be direct descendants of Ishmael, Abraham's first son and older half-brother of Isaac, whose son Jacob was later to become known as "Israel." Many Arabs believe that through Ishmael they are co-heirs of to Abraham's promise, and they correctly believe that present-day Israelis have no Biblical right to steal their land. Jewish Talmudic folklore also speaks of Ishmael, so the Zionists apparently felt they had to alter how Christians viewed the two half brothers in order to prevent Christians from siding with the Arabs over the land theft. The Zionists solved this dilemma by inserting a senseless footnote in the 1967 (Oxford) Scofield Reference Bible which, in effect, substitutes the word "Jews" for the words "The Israelitish people and Ishmaelitish people," as Scofield originally wrote it. The Israelitish and Ishmaelitish people lived 3000 years ago, but the Zionists want to claim the Arabs' part of the presumed birthright right now! Read it again; "all Jews are natural descendants of Abraham, but are not necessarily his spiritual posterity." And there is more of such boondogglery in the Oxford bible. On the same page 1137 we find yet another brand new Zionist-friendly note referring to the New Testament book of John 8:37. "(2) 8:44 THAT THIS SATANIC FATHERHOOD CANNOT BE LIMITED TO THE PHARISEES IS MADE CLEAR IN 1Jn3:8-10" (note SRB 1967 Edition, P1137 to John 8:44) Let us look at the verse Oxford is trying to soften, wherein Jesus is speaking directly to the Pharisees, who were the Jewish leaders of his day, and to no one else: "YE ARE OF YOUR FATHER THE DEVIL, AND THE LUST OF YOUR FATHER YE WILL DO. HE WAS A MURDERER FROM THE BEGINNING, AND ABODE NOT IN THE TRUTH, BECAUSE THERE IS NO TRUTH IN HIM. WHEN HE SPEAKEST A LIE, HE SPEAKEST OF HIS OWN; FOR HE IS A LIAR, AND THE FATHER OF IT." John 8:44 King James Ed.) Those are plain words. No wonder the Zionists wanted to dilute what Jesus said. Not only did Oxford add a new footnote in 1967, but they inserted no less than four reference cues into the King James sacred text, directing readers to their specious, apostate footnotes. It seems the Zionists cannot deny what Jesus said about Pharisees, but they do not want to bear the burden of being "sons of Satan" all by themselves. Now here's the text of the verse to which Oxford refers in order to try to solve this problem: "HE THAT COMMITETH SIN IS OF THE DEVIL; FOR THE DEVIL SINNETH FROM THE BEGINNING. FOR THIS PURPOSE THE SON OF GOD WAS MANIFESTED, THAT HE MIGHT DESTROY THE WORK OF THE DEVIL." (1Jn3:8.King James Edition) Fine, but this verse, spoken by Jesus to His followers in a speech about avoiding sin, in no way supports Oxford's argument that Jesus was not talking directly to and about the Pharisee leaders when he called them "Sons of Satan" in John 8:44. It is a different book written at a different time to a different audience. This is typical Christian Zionist diversion.
To find out to whom Jesus is speaking you must read the rest of John 8, not something from another book. Furthermore, John 8:44 is only one of some 77 verses where Jesus confronted the Pharisees by name and in many cases addressed them as "satanic" and as "vipers." Oxford simply ignores most of these denunciations by Jesus, adding no notes at all, and the Christian Zionists go along without question. These are a few examples of Zionist perversions of scripture that have shaped the doctrine of America's most politically powerful religious subculture, the "Christian Zionists" as Ariel Sharon calls them, or the dispensationalists, as intellectual followers call themselves, or the Judeo-Christians as our politically-correct politicians describe themselves. Today's Mid-East wars are not caused by the predisposition of the peoples, who are no more warlike than any human tribes. Without the pandering to Jewish and Zionist interests that is carried out by this subculture--the most vocal being the celebrity Christian evangelists--there would be no such wars, for there is not enough support for war outside of organized Zionist Christianity.
Reverend Stephen Sizer of Christ Church, England is perhaps the most dedicated new scholar writing about the Scofield Bible craze, popularly known as Christian Zionism. He has quipped, "Judging Christianity by looking at the American Evangelists is kind of like judging the British by watching Benny Hill."
Reverend Sizer's remark brings to mind another Benny; his name is Benny Hinn, not a British comic, but an American evangelist spouting inflammatory hate-filled words aimed at Muslims everywhere. Hinn was speaking to the applause of an aroused crowd of thousands in the American Airline Center in Dallas when he shocked two Ft. Worth Star Telegram religious reporters covering the July 3d event by announcing, "We are on God's side," speaking of Palestine. He shouted, "This is not a war between Jews and Arabs. It is a war between God and the Devil." Lest there be any doubt about it, Hinn was talking about a blood war in which the Israelis are "God" and the Palestinians are "the Devil."
Benny Hinn is one of hundreds of acknowledged Christian Zionists who have no problem spouting outright race hatred and who join in unconditional support for Israel without regard for which or how many of Israel's enemies are killed or crippled. His boldness stems from his knowledge that the vast majority of professing Christians from whom he seeks his lavish support-the Judeo-Christians, or Christian Zionists--do not shrink at his words, because they have been conditioned to accept them, just as Roman citizens learned to accept Christian persecution, even burning alive, under Nero. Several evangelists in attendance affirmed their agreement with Hinn - "the line between Christians and Muslims is the difference between good and evil."
An amazing number of professing Christians are in agreement with the fanatical likes of Hinn, including Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, James Dobson and hundreds more. Yet Hinn's profit-seeking fanaticism is not as shocking as that of men like Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention who occupy the highest positions in the area of conservative religious thought. Land may have stopped short of branding all Muslims as devils, but he attacked their leader and Prophet and stated that, according to Baptist Bible interpretation, the Palestinian people have no legal rights to property in Palestine. (See our discussion of Southern Baptists entitled "The Cause of the Conflict: Fixing Blame".)
The more politically conservative and libertarian the speaker expressing hatred for Islam, the more shocking the statement sounds. One example is Samuel Blumenfeld, a veteran textbook author and advocate of home education. His attack on Islam in a story entitled "Religion and Satanism" in the April 2002 conservative, Calvinist Chalcedon Report leaves little room for civil liberties and freedom of thought. He writes, "Islam is a religion ruled by Satan," and asks, "Can anyone under the influence of Satan be trusted?" Blumenfeld shows poor judgment and a lack of morality when he allows phrases such as "willing agents of Satan," "another manifestation of Satanism" and "the willingness of Muslims to believe blatant lies," to spill from his pen.
How can anyone interpret these words by Land, Hinn, Blumenfeld, and yes, our own President, as anything less than race hatred? Who would make such generalized and transparently false statements against any other minority except Muslims? About 100 million American Christians need to recover their true faith in Christ Jesus, who never denounced any individual on account of his group. Jesus even tried to save the Pharisees, and only denounced them when they showed themselves to be deceivers. There is not a word in the New Testament that urges any follower of Jesus to murder one child in Iraq or condemn Palestine to death. Race hatred is a Zionist, not a Christian, strategy.
Christian Zionism may be the most bloodthirsty apostasy in the entire history of Christianity or any other religion. Shame on its leaders: they have already brought the blood of untold numbers innocent people down upon the spires and prayer benches of America's churches. WHTT asks every Christian to share this article with pastors and church leaders, especially lay leaders. We ask every Muslim and Jew who reads it to do the same. You might wish to suspend giving money to any organizations that preach Zionist race hatred in any form, especially under the cover Jesus Christ. And lastly, We Hold These Truths invites your informed comments and questions. -Copyright 2002, WHTT, may be reproduced in full with permission.
Resources from WHTT. Listen to: "Kulture Klash II, How Oxford University Press and CI Scofield stole the Christian Bible" on WHTT Internet Talk Radio. Also available on tape. The Incredible Scofield and His Book, Joseph M. Canfield, hard cover. (soon available) Sherry's War: Twenty page research paper plus 1 hour audiotape by C. E. Carlson, - How Judeo-Christians mix and match scripture verses and use of extra text out of context to promote the Pop Church's "chosen people" and end times scenario. Sherry and many other well-meaning, professed Christians have justified war against Arab people without a scrap of scriptural support and with little knowledge of the conflict. "Sherry's War" offers insight into current Christian sub-culture and why many have justified or ignored the brutal assassinations of Islamic peoples simply because they are not Israelis or Christian. An introduction to WHTT's classic 20-page study by the same name; Sent to all contributors. The Final Apostasy - by Gordon Ginn Ph.D. Is your church apostate, would you know it if it were? A book that reveals the untold historical and documented ex-post facto changes made in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament...after Christ. These changes have affected what all of us believe, from the Reformation to Day911. Ginn sheds light on the turmoil in the Middle East and reveals the results of some Christians' tragic errors in accepting the "Final Apostasy". 218 pages Would you like to support our work? Copyright (c) 2001-2003, We Hold These Truths All Rights Reserved Please send questions and comments to info@whtt.org May be reproduced only in full.
Christian Zionism - Terror In Jesus' Name
By Yoginder Sikand CounterCurrents.org
12-14-5
Represented by literally hundreds of small denominations and churches today, particularly in America, Christian Zionism is today a formidable force and a major actor in global politics. Christian Zionism comes in various shades, but the core of its message is total, unflinching support to the state of Israel and the Zionist imperialist project. Christian Zionists today exercise an enormous clout in the Bush administration. Bush, too, may himself be characterised in some sense as a Christian Zionist, for his policies in the Middle East and elsewhere clearly reflect or tally with the Christian Zionist agenda.
War, conquest and imperialist domination, based on a fanatic insistence on the absolute truth of Christianity and the racial superiority of the Jews lie at the very heart of Christian Zionism. Christian Zionists believe that the Jews are God's 'Chosen People' and that God has given the Jews the absolute right to complete control over not just Palestine but, indeed, a vast stretch of territory, extending from present-day Egypt to Iraq, the so-called 'Greater Israel'. God, they claim, has selected the Jews above all other people. Hence, they insist, those who oppose the imperialist project of the advocates of 'Greater Israel' or the Zionist occupation of Palestine are 'God's enemies', deserving to be crushed by every available means, including outright war and decimation.
Advocating Israel does not mean, however, that Christian Zionists accept Judaism as a legitimate means of salvation after Jesus. Nor does it translate into genuine love for the Jews, a departure from the traditional teachings of the Church that, for centuries, viewed Jews as 'Christ-killers'. Since Christian Zionists believe that Christianity is the only religion acceptable to God, and that, as the Bible claims, salvation is possible only through Jesus, they insist that Jews cannot be 'saved' unless they convert to Christianity. Yet, because Christian Zionists are dogged defenders of the state of Israel and are fiercely anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, they have been able to establish a close nexus with right-wing Jewish groups and with the Israeli state and are today an integral part of the American-Israeli axis.
Christian Zionism is a call for global war. The belief that Christianity is the sole truth, that all other faiths are 'Satanic' or 'false', that the Jews must all gather in Palestine to fulfil so-called Biblical prophecies, and that a grand global war will soon erupt leading to the massacre of hundreds of millions and heralding the 'second coming' of Jesus, who will establish his Christian kingdom extending till the four corners of the world, clearly indicate the hate-driven, global expansionist project of Christian Zionism.
John Hagee is a prime example of a Christian Zionist zealot. He is the founder and pastor of the Cornerstone Church, in Texas, USA, which claims some 16,000 members. As with numerous other similar American Christian fundamentalist preachers, his church is richly endowed and media savvy. Hagee is the president of the 'Global Evangelism' media company that broadcasts his daily programmes on television and radio throughout the USA and around the world. He is the author of numerous books on Christian Zionism, some of which have been reprinted by Christian fundamentalist publishers abroad as well.
'Final Dawn Over Jerusalem' is one of Hagee's major writings on Christian Zionism that well exemplifies the imperialist agenda that lies at its very core. The aim of the book is to defend the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to denounce those who seek to protest Israeli atrocities, and to advocate the cause of 'Greater Israel', all this in the name of Christianity and premised on the notion of the Jews as being allegedly God's 'Chosen People'.
Racism is integral to the Christian Zionist message, as Hagee makes amply clear. The Bible, Hagee, says, describes the Jews as 'the apple of God's eye' [Zech 2:8]. He quotes the Bible as addressing the Jews and declaring, 'For you are a holy people to the LORD your God' and 'the LORD has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples who are on the face of the earth' [Deut.14:2]. This means, so Hagee argues, that those who harm the Jews or the state of Israel or stand in the way of the design of 'Greater Israel' will 'experience the instant wrath of God'. To those who dare to challenge the oppressive Zionist state, Hagee announces, 'The man or nation that lifts a voice or hand against Israel invites the wrath of God'. Such people will, Hagee insists, be 'cursed' by God.
Hagee's notion of God thus appears to be that of a tribal Jewish deity, who functions as a willing tool in the pursuit of Jewish expansionism. The Bible was written by Jewish hands, and given that, as many liberal Christians would themselves concede, much of it is a human product, numerous Biblical verses were written in order to legitimise the interests of the community from which its writers were drawn. This would seem obvious to any discerning layman, but Biblical literalists like Hagee vehemently disagree. For them every word of the Bible is sacrosanct and divine. Biblical literalism is pressed into the service of the Christian Zionist imperialist and racist agenda. Drawing upon numerous verses of the Bible, Hagee argues, 'God watches over Israel as a protective parent hovers over an only child'. 'The nation of Israel', he makes so bold as to declare, 'was created by a sovereign act of God. All other nations were created by an act of war or a declaration of men, but Israel was intentionally created by God so that He would have a physical place of inheritance on the earth'. Accordingly, Hagee would have us believe that for this god, who is seen as in need of a 'physical place' for himself, non-Jews or Gentiles, are second-rate human beings or less, and so can easily be dispensed with if they are seen as coming in the way of Jewish imperialism.
The tribal Jewish version of God that Hagee presents appears entirely unjust and arbitrary, far from being impartial in the way he deals with His creation. Given the fact that the God of the Biblical literalist imagination is a Jewish deity, and not the universal God who looks upon His entire creation impartially, he is seen as blessing Jewish conquests of territories of their enemies. Thus, quoting the Bible, Hagee writes that God gave the land of 'Greater Israel', a vast swathe of land stretching from Egypt all the way till Iraq, to the Jews, descendants of Isaac, forever. That being the case, Hagee suggests that people living in those territories, millions of Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, have no right to live there or else must accept to live under Jewish rule. Although Hagee does not say this explicitly, what this means is that those who refuse to accept Jewish rule must, therefore, be either killed or expelled.
The god of Hagee's imagination appears as an entirely whimsical real estate agent. 'God established Israel's national geographic boundaries', Hagee writes. 'The exact borders of Israel are detailed in Scripture just as our heavenly Father dictated them', he goes on, adding, 'The divine Surveyor drove the original stakes into Judean soil and decreed that no one should ever change these property lines. The real estate contract and lands covenants were signed in blood and stand to this very hour'. Hence, he argues, 'Jews have the absolute right as mandated by God to the land of Israel and, more specifically, to the city of Jerusalem'. Hence, he suggests, Palestinians have no claim to their own historical land, and must make way for Jewish occupiers.
Hagee's defence of Zionist imperialism goes to ridiculous lengths. Laughable as this may sound, he argues, 'Israel has a Spy in the sky'-God Himself. God, he claims, provides Israel, the Jewish people and the state of Israel, with special protection. 'No nation in the world can match the defensive force guarding the State of Israel. The archangel Michael has a special assignment to guard Israel'. And those who, for any reason oppose Israel, and this includes Palestinians fighting Israeli occupation and oppression, are said to incur God's wrath. 'The Lord stands watch in the darkest night with an eye trained on the nation of Israel and, more specifically, Jerusalem. Those who fight with Israel fight with Him', Hagee asserts.
So central is Israel to Hagee's tribalistic version of God that he goes to the extent of arguing that the fate of each and every person on the face of the planet depends essentially on his or her attitude to the Jews. 'Prosperity or punishment depends on how we treat Israel', he alleges, because, he claims, the Jews, as descendants of Abraham 'enjoy heavenly favour'. To back his claim he quotes the Bible as saying that when God entered into a covenant with Abraham, He gave him an 'awesome promise', saying, 'I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed' [Gen. 12:3]. Hence, Hagee insists, the United States, and, indeed, anyone else who wishes to please God, must consistently engage in 'compassionate support of the State of Israel', adding that, 'The quickest and most effective way to be on God's side is to stand with the State of Israel and the Jewish people in their hour of need'. By doing this, he claims, one can win God's favour, because, 'God blesses the man or nation that blesses Israel or the Jewish people'.
At no time before, Hagee firmly believes, has support for Israel and Zionist imperialism, been more crucial than today. This is because, he claims, Jesus is returning to the world soon, and Israel must be protected in order to welcome the Messiah. Hagee's image of Jesus in his 'second coming' bears no resemblance to the familiar notion of the suffering, loving Jesus. Rather, in his description Jesus appears as a fierce warrior, rallying Christians to arms and heralding the final, global war, ironically in the name of the 'Prince of Peace'. In the doomsday scenario that Hagee outlines, what he calls 'fanatical attacks' by Arabs on Israel, particularly Jerusalem, would mount. In response, Christ ians the world over, he says, must rally behind Israel. At this hour, he insists, 'we must let the world know that if a line has to be drawn, it will be drawn around Christians as well as Jews. We are united and indivisible'.
The city of Jersualem, Hagee believes, is the crux of the final battle before Jesus' 'second coming'. This city, considered sacred by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, has been ordained, so Hagee argues, by God to be 'under the exclusive control of the Jewish people' until Jesus arrives again. The final battle of Armageddon will, he writes, be centred on this city, with Arabs or Muslims seeking to wrest control of it from the Jews. In this regard, Hagee says, Christians, for their part, must staunchly defend Israel and must refuse any peace offers, such as allowing for a shared Jerusalem or joint control of the town by Jews and Arabs. In particular, he appeals to the United States to do everything in its power to back Israel and to crush its opponents, claiming this is the only way to win God's favour. If America fails to do this, he warns, it would be crushed by God Himself!
Quoting various verses of the Bible, Hagee describes what he sees as the unfolding of events of cosmic proportions, ushering in a global war the like of which has never been witnessed hitherto and heralding the 'second coming of Jesus'. In this global war, he says, Muslims, whom he regards as followers of a 'false' religion, would ally with the Russians to fight against Israel. This would lead to a global nuclear war, with hundreds of millions being killed. At this point, the 'Anti-Christ' will appear, attack Jerusalem and will take over the reigns of the world, falsely claiming to usher in peace. But, this grand deception will not last long, and, instead, will only lead to even more devastating wars. At this time, Hagee says, Christians must defend, by every means possible, the Jews and Israel, and wage war against the armies of those opposed to God's 'Chosen Race', the Jews. Only then can they be saved, he insists.
After years of global war and terrible destruction, Hagee writes, Jesus will be sent by God to deliver the world. Mounted on a white horse, he will arrive at the battlefield at Armageddon. Defeating the 'Anti-Christ' and his army, he will establish his global kingdom with his capital in Jerusalem, there to 'rule and reign forever'. Hagee's description of Jesus' future global kingdom offers little cause to cheer for non-Christians, including, ironically, even the Jews whom he so ardently defends. It would, as he himself makes clear, be nothing short of a global Christian empire, and an antiquated one at that, with kings and queens and presidents still in place! How they would continue to be around when Jesus rules the whole world is a mystery that Hagee leaves unsolved.
Ruled by Jesus, Hagee writes, 'Jerusalem, the apple of God's eye, will become the joy of the world. The city will become the international worship center, and people from all over the world will make pilgrimages to worship in the holy temple. Kings, queens, princes and presidents shall come to the Holy City' to adore Jesus. Presumably, these all will be Christians themselves, for Hagee quotes the Bible as predicting that 'at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father'.
As Hagee's book clearly indicates, Christian Zionism, rooted in tradition of the Crusades and a long history of Church triumphalism, is a recipe for global war and Christian imperialism. Moreover, it reflects a total lack of genuine spirituality, seeking to reduce the notion of God into a petty, whimsical and racist dictator who willingly urges the slaughter of innocents in order to protect the expansionist designs of his supposedly 'Chosen People'. Of course, Christian Zionism is hardly unique in its use of religion for such blatantly political ends, but given the immense clout enjoyed by its advocates today, especially in America, it is a much more menacing threat to world peace than is sometimes imagined and cannot be simply dismissed as the ravings of lunatics on the fringe.
Reproduced gratefully from: www.CounterCurrents.org
LIBERATING AMERICA FROM ISRAEL
By Paul Findley
Nine-eleven would not have occurred if the U.S. government had refused to help Israel humiliate and destroy Palestinian society. Few express this conclusion publicly, but many believe it is the truth. I believe the catastrophe could have been prevented if any U.S. president during the past 35 years had had the courage and wisdom to suspend all U.S. aid until Israel withdrew from the Arab land seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The U.S. lobby for Israel is powerful and intimidating, but any determined president-even President Bush this very day-could prevail and win overwhelming public support for the suspension of aid by laying these facts before the American people:
Israel's present government, like its predecessors, is determined to annex the West Bank-biblical Judea and Sumaria-so Israel will become Greater Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who maintain a powerful role in Israeli politics, believe the Jewish Messiah will not come until Greater Israel is a reality. Although a minority in Israel, they are committed, aggressive, and influential. Because of deep religious conviction, they are determined to prevent Palestinians from gaining statehood on any part of the West Bank.
In its violent assaults on Palestinians, Israel uses the pretext of eradicating terrorism, but its forces are actually engaged advancing the territorial expansion just cited. Under the guise of anti-terrorism, Israeli forces treat Palestinians worse than cattle. With due process nowhere to be found, hundreds are detained for long periods and most are tortured. Some are assassinated. Homes, orchards, and business places are destroyed. Entire cities are kept under intermittent curfew, some confinements lasting for weeks. Injured or ill Palestinians needing emergency medical care are routinely held at checkpoints for an hour or more. Many children are undernourished. The West Bank and Gaza have become giant concentration camps. None of this could have occurred without U.S. support. Perhaps Israeli officials believe life will become so unbearable that most Palestinians will eventually leave their ancestral homes.
Once beloved worldwide, the U.S. government finds itself reviled in most countries because it provides unconditional support of Israeli violations of the United Nations Charter, international law, and the precepts of all major religious faiths.
How did the American people get into this fix?
Nine-eleven had its principal origin 35 years ago when Israel's U.S. lobby began its unbroken success in stifling debate about the proper U.S. role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and effectively concealed from public awareness the fact that the U.S. government gives massive uncritical support to Israel.
Thanks to the suffocating influence of Israel's U.S. lobby, open discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been non-existent in our government all these years. I have firsthand knowledge, because I was a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in June 1967 when Israeli military forces took control of the Golan Heights, a part of Syria, as well as the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza. I continued as a member for 16 years and to this day maintain a close watch on Congress.
For 35 years, not a word has been expressed in that committee or in either chamber of Congress that deserves to be called debate on Middle East policy. No restrictive or limiting amendments on aid to Israel have been offered for 20 years, and none of the few offered in previous years received more than a handful of votes. On Capitol Hill, criticism of Israel, even in private conversation, is all but forbidden, treated as downright unpatriotic, if not anti-Semitic. The continued absence of free speech was assured when those few who spoke out-Senators Adlai Stevenson and Charles Percy, and Reps. Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, Earl Hilliard, and myself-were defeated at the polls by candidates heavily financed by pro-Israel forces.
As a result, legislation dealing with the Middle East has been heavily biased in favor of Israel and against Palestinians and other Arabs year after year. Home constituencies, misled by news coverage equally lop-sided in Israel's favor, remain largely unaware that Congress behaves as if it were a subcommittee of the Israeli parliament.
However, the bias is widely noted beyond America, where most news media candidly cover Israel's conquest and generally excoriate America's complicity and complacency. When President Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, sometimes called the Butcher of Beirut, as "my dear friend" and "a man of peace" after Israeli forces, using U.S.-donated arms, completed their devastation of the West Bank last spring, worldwide anger against American policy reached the boiling point.
The fury should surprise no one who reads foreign newspapers or listens to BBC. In several televised statements long before 9/11, Osama bin Laden, believed by U.S. authorities to have masterminded 9/11, cited U.S. complicity in Israel's destruction of Palestinian society as a principal complaint. Prominent foreigners, in and out of government, express their opposition to U.S. policies with unprecedented frequency and severity, especially since Bush announced his determination to make war against Iraq.
The lobby's intimidation remains pervasive. It seems to reach every government center and even houses of worship and revered institutions of higher learning. It is highly effective in silencing the many U.S. Jews who object to the lobby's tactics and Israel's brutality.
Nothing can justify 9/11. Those guilty deserve maximum punishment, but it makes sense for America to examine motivations promptly and as carefully as possible. Terrorism almost always arises from deeply-felt grievances. If they can be eradicated or eased, terrorist passions are certain to subside.
Today, a year after 9/11, President Bush has made no attempt to redress grievances, or even to identify them. In fact, he has made the scene far worse by supporting Israel's religious war against Palestinians, an alliance that has intensified anti-American anger. He seems oblivious to the fact that nearly two billion people worldwide regard the plight of Palestinians as today's most important foreign-policy challenge. No one in authority will admit a calamitous reality that is skillfully shielded from the American people but clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered 9/11 and its aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq, mainly because U.S. policy in the Middle East is made in Israel, not in Washington.
Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967. The suspension would force Sharon's compliance or lead to his removal from office, as the Israeli electorate will not tolerate a prime minister who is at odds with the White House.
If Bush needs an additional reason for doing the right thing, he can justify the suspension as a matter of military necessity, an essential step in winning international support for his war on terrorism. He can cite a worthy precedent. When President Abraham Lincoln issued the proclamation that freed only the slaves in states that were then in rebellion, he make the restriction because of "military necessity." If Bush suspends U.S. aid, he will liberate all Americans from long years of bondage to Israel's misdeeds.
Paul Findley, a Representative from Illinois 1961-83, is the author of three books related to the Middle East, the latest being Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam. He resides in Jacksonville, Illinois.
For the facts about the USS Liberty, visit: http://www.ussliberty.com or http://home.cfl.rr.com/gidusko/liberty/
ALFRED M. LILIENTHAL
It had been a nasty, rainy night when an elderly, affluent Hartford couple made their way from their home to a meeting. As their car slowly turned left at the entrance to the Jewish Community Center, another automobile raced out of the fog and rammed into them. My cousin, whose countless civil and philanthropic deeds had endeared her to the community, was dead before she could reach the hospital; her husband seriously injured.
Ever since the appearance of my Readers' Digest article, in which I crossed swords with Zionist Organization chieftain, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, my relatives in Hartford had looked upon me as a plain and simple nut, if not a traitor. Former close family ties had deteriorated to a point of near-total ostracism. Nevertheless, blood is thicker than water, and I rushed to Connecticut for the last rites of a wonderful woman, and was among the 800 to pay Sunday morning tribute to her in a packed synagogue-the very one from which, in the presence of many family members, I had been excoriated by the rabbi during the High Holy Days services thirty years earlier for daring to speak out publicly against Zionism.
Having flown up from Washington, I spent the night at the home of other cousins from whom my iconoclastic views had separated me even before the Digest piece appeared.
Cousin Bern and I stayed up reminiscing late into the night, and, of course, the Middle East crisis came into our conversation. "You know, I have never been a Zionist," he said. "But something had to be done to provide a home for Jewish refugees. That is why I have always supported the State of Israel, given substantially to the UJA, and even headed the Hartford drive." This reasoning, so typical of thousands of other Jews, has been responsible for the Zionist takeover of the American Jewish community-lock, stock and barrel.
My rejoinder, I feared, fell on ears as deaf as those I had encountered in my continual efforts to open doors to reasoning and to banish emotionalism. Americans of Jewish faith cannot visualize the extent to which their rabbis and secular leadership, operating through Organized Jewry, have totally deceived them into confusing humanitarianism with nation-building, religion and nationalism. A home could have been found in 1947 for the 285 000 survivors of Hitler's concentration camps without ever establishing a state; just as today security for the Jews of Israel can be obtained without the continued expansionism wrought by the West Bank settlements policy or the ruthless repression of the rights of the Palestinian people.
But only an ever-larger state will appease the hungry ambitions of Zionist leaders. Privately they have incessantly declared that they have no interest in refugees, only in creating a sovereign state. In their atheism and agnosticism, they have manifested even less concern for Judaism, the religious faith. Adroitly exploiting Nazi genocide, their propaganda has used the Holocaust to extract a blank check from Zionist and non-Zionist co-religionists which enabled them in 1948 to bet the future of American Judaism on the roulette of power politics.
Speaking unqualifiedly in the name of all Jews, Zionist acumen made certain that the politicians remained hypnotized more than ever by the "Jewish vote." All they had to do was to remind both political parties that their eloquent support of Israel was a prerequisite for their conquest of pivotal election states.
When so much is at stake in the Middle East, inevitably the question must arise: How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people? Far from all Jews believed in the concept of the Jewish state, and the Jews themselves constituted but a very small minority of the American population, less than three percent. Is it possible that Americans have been so apathetic that six million can manipulate 230 million?
But there are many compelling reasons why population figures are of little relevance to the Zionist success story. Mahatma Gandhi once remarked: "Numbers are not critical to any struggle. Strength and purpose are." This strength, matched by wealth and position, can be summed up in one word: power. The Zionists have been able to muster fantastic muscle at the right moment and at the right place, or instill the fear that it might be used.
The triumph of Zionism would never have been Possible without the 20th century's Holy Trinity: Hitler, the supine politicians and the compliant media. By labeling those who opposed the course upon which Israeli leadership intractably committed their new state as "anti-Semitic," they crushed budding dissent. Without understanding the underlying reasons, the Jewish rank and file could point to the large number of prominent Christian supporters of the state and boast: "Just as it is not necessary to be Jewish to love Levy's rye bread, so one need not be Jewish to be a Zionist." Everyone loves a winner. What little organized opposition there was to Zionism totally collapsed with Israel's stirring victory in the June 1967 six-day war. The anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism all but vanished, and thereafter, even non-Zionists were not ashamed to be counted in Zionists ranks, as Commentary editor Norman Podhertz so loudly proclaimed in "Now, Instant Zionism."
A principal reason for the remarkable political success achieved by the Jewish connection and the Zionist connectors lies deep in the American political system. Our system of representative government has been profoundly affected by the growing influence and affluence of minority pressure groups, whose strength invariably increases as presidential elections approach. This makes it virtually impossible to formulate foreign policy in the American national interest. The Electoral College system has greatly fortified the position of the national lobbies established by ethnic, religious and other minority pressure groups-the Jewish-Zionist-Israel lobby in particular.
Under this anachronistic system, state votes go as a unit to the candidate winning a plurality of the vote, which endows a well-organized lobby with tremendous bargaining power. And the Jewish connection has been augmented by the Jewish location: seventy-six percent of American Jewry is concentrated in sixteen cities of six states -California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and Florida-with 181 electoral votes. It only takes 270 electoral votes to elect the next President of the United States.
This explains why the politicians have been mesmerized by fear of the "Jewish vote" in a hotly contested state. The inordinate Israelist influence over the White House, the Congress and other elected officials, stems from this ability to pander bloc votes, as well as to fill the campaign coffers of both parties with timely contributions. The individual Jew who might not go along with Zionist ideology or Jewish nationalism is too cowardly to speak out and take the usurpers of his voice to task; and so the peddling goes forward.
Few Jews appreciate the methodology employed by the powerful Zionist lobby in Washington to keep the politicians in line. It's not exactly pretty, and even in the declining morality of our day, I am certain that many would be revolted by what is done in their name to help the Middle East's "bastion of democracy."
This lobby, fully integrated within our national elective process, has become intrinsic to the warp and woof of the U.S. political system for the past thirty-two years. Show me a man who is running for President, and I will show you invariably a politician who will not dare offend this potent lobby. Show me a legislator in either branch of the congress, and I will show you an office holder who invariably bows to this powerful pressure group. Whereas other pressure groups may have to comb the congressional offices, arguing the merits of certain proposals in order to gain the necessary affirmative votes, the Israeli lobby channels information to its many allies in Congress, rounds up scores of assured votes when they are needed, and has the pleasant task of urging well-intentioned, overly eager members not to wander off with their own competing legislation in support of Israel.
During the height of the 1973 war, a thirty-six hour phone blitz by I.L. Kenen, the head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC, the Israeli lobby), resulted, on 18 October, in the immediate introduction of legislation in both houses to transfer "Phantom aircraft and other equipment in the quantities needed by Israel to repel aggressors in the amount of $2.2 billion." A massive campaign prefaced the passage of this military aid bill, and an attempt to strip $500 million from the legislation was defeated when Kenen fired off ninety-five telegrams to House Appropriations and Foreign Affairs Committee members.
When the influential chairman of the latter committee, Clement J. Zablocki, sought across-the-board reductions in military exports to Middle East countries, including Israel, he found himself forced to bow to Zionist pressure. The "Israel-Firsters" and AIPAG moved to block him from assuming the chairmanship of the committee in the 95th Congress. Only after a bitter, behind the scenes, conference was an amicable arrangement worked out. The Congressman has not since opposed any of Israel's lofty ambitions on Capitol Hill.
Surprisingly, it was the New York Times itself, usually the staunchest supporter of Zionist and Israeli goals, which exposed and analyzed frankly the activities of this most powerful of pressure groups in an August 1975 article. As a demonstration of an allegedly new, U.S. impartiality, President Ford had agreed to sell Jordan the improved Hawk missiles with the NAS systems worth some $256 million. But the lobby went immediately to work. A secret communication about the proposed sale, based on a classified Defense Department document, sent by the White House to members of the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committees, was leaked to AIPAC by Zionist aides of New Jersey Senator Clifford P. Case and New York Representative Jonathan B. Bingham. Immediately, the lobby mobilized its organization in 197 major and 200 smaller cities across the country, warning of the dangers to Israel. In a two-page memorandum and letter describing the scope and nature of the proposed sale, the lobby concluded that it was capable of "providing cover for offensive operations against Israel."
The communities were called upon to act at once and to apply forceful pressure. Within twenty-four hours of the memorandum's distribution, congressmen were besieged with phone calls, telegrams and mailgrams from constituents urging them to oppose the Hawk sale to Jordan.
Despite the threat that Jordan's King Hussein might turn elsewhere, even to the Soviet Union, the legislators stuck by their guns, and the matter was tabled. An unidentified Democratic Senator was quoted in the Times as saying that he would only talk without attribution about the Israeli lobby "because they can deliver votes and they control a lot of campaign contributions. That's why I cannot go on the record or I'd be dead."
"It's the strongest lobby," the Senator added. "It doesn't dilute its strength by lobbying on other issues -a lot of members resent it, but they don't feel they can do anything about it. That lobby wants to do Congress' thinking on Israel-they don't want any independent judgements."
Demands on the Justice Department to investigate how a classified White House document had been transmitted to an agent of the State of Israel were ignored. The lobby was too strong.
Spade work on the Hill has been carried out by a group of dedicated, key young staff people. Michael Kraft from Senator Case's office; Stephen Bryen of the Middle East subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Scott Cohen, Senator Charles Percy's aide; Richard Perle of Senator Henry Jackson's staff; Richard D. Siegel from Pennsylvania Senator Richard Shweicker's office; Mel Grossman, an aide to Florida's Edward J. Gurney; Edward A. "Pete" Lakeland, Jacob Javits' aide; Daniel L. Speigel from Senator Muriel Humphrey's office; Mel Levine, an aide to California's John V. Tunney; Jay Berman from Birch Bayh's office; and Kenneth Davis, an assistant to Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania when he was Minority Leader.
According to Stephan D. Isaacs in his book Jews and American Politics, this group has worked "quietly, drafting legislation and other materials and mounting 'backfires' to ensure support of appropriate legislation advancing Israel's many causes" while Senators Jackson, Javits, Ribicoff and others worked "out front" to garner support among fellow Senators.
It was this effort that was responsible for the passage of the Jackson-Vanick amendment to the 1972 U.S. trade agreement with the Soviet Union, the first nail placed in the coffin of détente. Pleas of President Ford-who had earlier expressed sympathy for the plight of Soviet Jewry in a "State of the World" address-to reject this amendment as inimical to American interests and relations with the Soviet Union were to no avail. Jackson, the lobby's stalwart champion on the issue of Soviet Jewry, insisted on encumbering the agreement, mutually advantageous to the U.S. and the Soviet Union, with the amendment guaranteeing an annual emigration of a set number of Soviet Jews. Whether d6tente is good or not for the U.S. is debatable, but to link this issue with the question of Soviet Jewry is a wholly untenable position.
The one senator who, over many years, consistently refused to bow to Zionist pressures and who defied the Israeli lobby was Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright. He incurred Zionist wrath when he stated on "Face the Nation" in 1973 that: "The Israelis control the policy of the Congress and the Senate ... Somewhere around 80% of the Senate of the U.S. is completely in support of Israel-of anything Israel wants..."
Jews in Arkansas blasted the Senator: "Fulbright's rival in the May 1974 Democratic primary, Governor Dale Bumpers boasted:
I could have bought central Arkansas with the offers of money from the Jewish community ... The offer of assistance came from people in New York and California who had raised a lot of money in the Jewish community for political purposes.
To the great satisfaction of the lobby, this flow of money helped defeat Senator Fulbright and return him to private life. But this victory in the long run may turn out to be only a Pyrrhic one for American Jews.
In a memorable speech on the floor of the Senate, Mr Fulbright had placed "the whipsawing of foreign policy by certain minority groups to the detriment of the national interest" in its broader, historical perspective:
Mr. President, this nation has welcomed millions of immigrants from abroad. In the 19th century we were called the melting pot, and we were proud of that description. It meant that there came to this land people of diverse creeds, colors and races. These immigrants became good Americans, and their ethnic or religious origins were of secondary importance. But in recent years we have seen the rise of organizations dedicated apparently, not to America, but to foreign states and groups. The conduct of foreign policy for America has been seriously compromised in this development. We can survive this development, Mr. President, only if our political institutions-and the Senate in particular- retain their objectivity and their independence so that they can serve all Americans.
But as long as legislative staff members kept their Jewishness uppermost in mind, vital objectivity could never be accomplished.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith, likewise, has done its share in "converting" congressmen at critical moments. Opposition to sending the deadly C-3 concussion bombs to the Zionist state immediately brought overt suggestions from the ADL that opponents were secretly anti-Semitic. "That's the perversive force they strike at in the hearts of members up here," one Capitol Hill aide was quoted as saying. "If you're in opposition to anything Israel wants, you get a big white paintbrush that says you're anti-Semitic."
The story behind legislative chicanery in behalf of Israel scarcely ever surfaces, and when it does, it is summarily dismissed as anti-Semitic propaganda. But one day, predicted a senior U.S. diplomat, according to Newsweek magazine, there will be a congressional investigation into how we lost the Middle East that will make the great China debate seem trivial. It is sad to contemplate how many innocent American Jews may suffer for the actions of their self-appointed spokesmen. The undue influence registered by a small minority on behalf of a foreign state will indeed not look pretty.
In the light of day, the link between the thirteen-year Israeli occupation of Holy Jerusalem and the course taken by the Islamic revolution in Iran will be more than clear. The unholy alliance forged between Iran and Israel, supported by pressure on successive presidents, together with the Henry Kissinger-Nelson Rockefeller initiative, during the midst of the hostage crisis, in bringing the Shah to the U.S., will one day become common knowledge. More people, to use the 1948 words of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time of Israel's establishment, will complain about "the shameful junking of international interests to regain Jewish votes." The silencing of criticism of Israeli policy by a veritable world Who's Who, ranging from philosopher William Ernest Hocking, Father Daniel Berrigan and Dorothy Thompson to Dag Hammarskjold, Bruno Kreisky and Charles de Gaulle, will in the long run prove to have been a real tragedy for all Americans.
Can the Jewish community in the United States be brought to its senses before total disaster overtakes it? Can the process, once described by the editor of the Jewish Newsletter William Zuckerman as "Campaign Judaism," by which this community has "almost consciously emptied itself of all higher aspirations and spiritual needs and has willingly limited itself to the role of financial milk cow for others" be brought to an end? It will indeed be difficult to tear Jewish leaders and their wives from the massive Israeli Bond and UJA drives, from Hadassah teas, and gaudy banquets, and garish publicity, all masked as philanthrophic functions.
Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Hebrew University, Israel Shahak, himself a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, maintains that undeviating devotion to the State of Israel by Israeli and American Jews is "both immoral and against the mainstream of Jewish tradition and is nothing but Jewish apostasy."
Dr. Shahak added:
Jews used to believe, and say it three times a day, that a Jew should be devoted to God, and God alone. A small minority still believe it. But it seems to me that the majority of my people has left God and substituted an idol in its place, exactly as happened when they were devoted to the golden calf in the desert and gave away their gold to make it. The name of this modern idol is the State of Israel.
It will be no simple task to detach Jews from such idolatrous worship. The blatant expansionism and racism, defiantly displayed by Prime Minister Begin did not awaken American Jews. They are unable to discern that the gravest danger to peace stems not so much from geographic expansionism, in the guise of security, or from the seizure of land belonging to Palestinian Arabs for centuries, but from ideological expansionism which views Palestine as belonging exclusively to the Jewish people as inchoate citizens of the state established in their name. It is extemely doubtful whether any successor to Menachem Begin, be he Shimon Peres or Ezer Weizman, will dare to attempt to cast Israel out of its Zionist mold or that there will be a Jewish American revolt.
The myth-makers have been too powerful in weaving their web. Hebrew, Israelite, Judean, Judaism and the Jewish people have been accepted as one, suggesting historic continuity. In fact they were different people in different historical times with varying ways of life who continually intermarried with indigenous Amorites, Canaanites, Midianites, Phoenicians and other Semitic ancestors of the present-day Arabs. It is too often forgotten that Judaism was a tremendous proselytizing force throughout the world before, and even after, the coming of Jesus. In The Thirteenth Tribe, Arthur Koestler, supported overwhelmingly by such anthropologists as Ripley, Weissenberg, Hertz, Boas, Mead and Fishberg, proves that the vast majority of today's Jews are descendants of the Khazars of South Russia. They converted to Judaism in 70 A.D. at the time of the dispersion of the small, original Judaic Palestinian population by Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus. The Ben-Gurions, the Golda Meirs, and Begins, who have clamored to go back "home," probably never had antecedents in that part of the world.
The American Jew has permitted the Zionist quest for roots in Palestine to lead him into the most dangerous shoals. The abnormal, unique relationship, which he has allowed to be carried out in his name, between Jews in the United States and Israel, has forged an "Israel-First" policy which is an underlying factor in the continuing tensions besetting the Middle East and the Islamic world. U.S. security interests have become endangered; an energy crisis has been thrust into every American home. The enmity towards the United States, incurred in the Arab-Muslim world, has eroded the measureless reservoir of goodwill stemming from the many educational and eleemosynary institutions founded by Americans.
In a world which has never needed spiritual faith more than during this present threat to civilization, universal Judaism has itself become gravely imperiled. For what is left of its universal, ethical precepts without the ethos of righteousness? In the ruthless takeover of Palestine, in driving out the indigenous population, the Israelis have violated tenets deeply imbeded in the preachments of the Prophets. And sadly, American Jews have compounded the felonly with racist attitudes towards Palestinians, in particular the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
What is both sad and equally ironic, is that in permitting themselves to be traumatized by a refuted racial myth, the Jews of America have allowed Hitler to triumph. In doling out incarceration and death while sweeping through conquered Europe, the FiAhrer undid the laws of emancipation and the process of integration for which so many Jews had so-long struggled, when he decreed: "You are not a German, you are a Jew-You are not a Frenchman, you are a Jew-You are not a Belgian, you are a Jew." Yet these are the identical words Zionist leaders intone as they meticulously promote the emigration to the Holy Land of Jews from around the globe, plotting their exodus from lands in which they have lived happily for centuries. Moshe Dayan succinctly expressed it in the New York Times magazine: "I am a Jew before I am an Israeli."
Rarely has the deceit of so few been so widely practiced to the detriment of so many, as in the formulation and implementation of American Middle East policy. But normal, friendly relations with all peoples of the region may still be restored. If the PLO is recognized by the U.S. and obstacles to the creation of a Palestinian state are removed, Arab and Jew, Muslim and Hebrew, in an atmosphere of justice, may still renew their millenial peaceful co-existence side by side. But there is no place for Zionism.
Such a happy goal is not illusory. It may be achieved when Jewish Americans find the courage to stand up as individuals and throw off the yoke of Organized Jewry. It is imperative-by word and, more importantly, by deed-for every Jew in the United States to articulate this credo openly and loudly: "Judaism is not Zionism -- Zionism is not Judaism -- anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Israel's flag is, in no way, mine."
April 2002 Prospect magazine (UK)
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/Start.asp
America's unconditional support for Israel runs counter to the interests of the US and its allies. We need an open, unprejudiced debate about it
Until recently, America's middle east policy was a peripheral part of its global strategy, which focused on preventing the Soviet Union from intimidating US allies in western Europe and east Asia. Britain was the dominant western power in the middle east until the 1960s, and US influence was countered in much of the region by the Soviet Union until the end of the cold war. The indifference of much of the national security elite and the public to the region, in between crises, permitted US policy to be dominated by two US domestic lobbies, one ethnic and one economic-the Israel lobby and the oil industry (which occasionally clashed over issues like US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia).
Times have changed. The collapse of the Soviet empire created a power vacuum which has been filled by the US, first in the Persian Gulf following the Gulf war, and now in central Asia as a result of the Afghan war. Today the middle east is becoming the centre of US foreign policy-a fact illustrated in the most shocking way by the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. A debate within the US over the goals and methods of American policy in the middle east is long overdue. Unfortunately, an uninhibited debate is not taking place, because of the disproportionate influence of the Israel lobby.
Today the Israel lobby distorts US foreign policy in a number of ways. Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, enabled by US weapons and money, inflames anti-American attitudes in Arab and Muslim countries. The expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land makes a mockery of the US commitment to self-determination for Kosovo, East Timor and Tibet. The US strategy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran, pleases Israel-which is most threatened by them-but violates the logic of realpolitik and alienates most of America's other allies. Beyond the region, US policy on nuclear weapons proliferation is undermined by the double standard that has led it to ignore Israel's nuclear programme while condemning those of India and Pakistan.
The debate that is missing in the US is not one between Americans who want Israel to survive and those-a marginal minority-who want Israel to be destroyed. The US should support Israel's right to exist within internationally-recognised borders and to defend itself against threats. What is needed is a debate between those who want to link US support for Israel to Israeli behaviour, in the light of America's own strategic goals and moral ideals, and those who want there to be no linkage. For the American Israel lobby, Tony Smith observes in his authoritative study, Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American Foreign Policy (Harvard), "to be a 'friend of Israel' or 'pro-Israel' apparently means something quite simple: that Israel alone should decide the terms of its relations with its Arab neighbours and that the US should endorse these terms, whatever they may be."
The Israel lobby is one special-interest pressure group among many. It is a loose network of individuals and organisations, of which the most important are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-described by the Detroit Jewish News as "a veritable training camp for Capitol Hill staffers"-and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. The Israel lobby is not identical with the diverse Jewish-American community. Many Jewish-Americans are troubled by Israeli policies and some actively campaign against them, while some non-Jewish Americans-most of them members of the Protestant right-play a significant role in the lobby. Even pro-Israel groups differ on the question of Israeli policies. According to Matthew Dorf in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: "The Zionist Organisation of America lobbies Congress to slow the peace process. Their allies are mostly Republicans. At the same time, the Israel Policy Forum and Americans for Peace Now work to move the process along. Democrats are most sympathetic to their calls."
The Israel lobby is united not by a consensus about Israeli policies but by a consensus about US policies towards Israel. Most of the disparate elements of the pro-Israel coalition support two things. The first is massive US funding for Israel. As Stephen M Walt writes in International Security (Winter 2001/02), "In 1967 Israel's defence spending was less than half the combined defence expenditures of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria; today Israel's defence expenditure is 30 per cent larger than the combined defence spending of these four Arab states." Israel receives more of America's foreign aid budget than any other country-$3 billion a year, two thirds in military grants (total aid since 1979 is over $70 billion).
Along with aid, the Israel lobby demands unconditional US diplomatic protection of Israel in the UN and other forums. To a degree, this is justified; the US has been right to denounce the ritual "Zionism-is-racism" rhetoric of various kleptocracies and police states. The US, however, has been wrong to block repeatedly efforts by its major democratic allies in the UN security council to condemn Israeli repression and colonisation in the occupied territories.
It is difficult to prove direct cause-and-effect connections between the power of a lobby and America's foreign policy positions. But, in the middle east, it is hard to explain America's failure to pressure Israel into a final land-for-peace settlement-particularly since the Oslo deal in 1993-without factoring in the Israel lobby. The influence of the lobby may be easier to detect in the way US positions have shifted on more specific totems of the conflict. For example, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were regarded as illegal during the Carter administration. Under Reagan, they shifted to being an "obstacle" to peace and are now just a complicating factor. Similarly, East Jerusalem was considered by the US to be part of the occupied territories but recently its status has become rather more ambiguous.
Concern on the part of US citizens about the fate of members of their ethnic group or religion in foreign countries is nothing new. The Irish-American, Cuban-American and Greek-American lobbies have all significantly influenced US foreign policy. And the desire to win over Catholic voters with eastern European relatives in the 1996 election is thought to have been a factor in President Clinton's decision to expand Nato to the east. However, the Israel lobby is different in strategy and scale from other historic American ethnic lobbies.
Most ethnic lobbies-of which the German and Irish diasporas were the most influential in the past-have based their power on votes, not money. (Most immigrant groups have been relatively poor at first, and have lost their ethnic identity on becoming more prosperous.) The influence of these lobbies has usually been confined to cities and states in which particular ethnic groups have been concentrated-Irish-American Boston, German-American Milwaukee, Cuban-American Miami. The emergent Latino lobby is similar in its geographic limitation. The small US Jewish population (about 2 per cent of the total) is highly concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and a few other areas.
The Israel lobby, however, is not primarily a traditional ethnic voter machine; it is an ethnic donor machine. Unique among ethno-political machines in the US, the Israel lobby has emulated the techniques of national lobbies based on economic interests (both industry groups and unions) or social issues (the National Rifle Association, pro- and anti-abortion groups). The lobby uses nationwide campaign donations, often funnelled through local "astroturf" (phony grassroots) organisations with names like Tennesseans for Better Government and the Walters Construction Management Political Committee of Colorado, to influence members of Congress in areas where there are few Jewish voters.
Stephen Steinlight, in an essay for the Centre for Immigration Studies, describes how the Israel lobby uses donations to influence elected officials: "Unless and until the triumph of campaign finance reform is complete...the great material wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by key figures in Congress. That power is exerted within the political system from the local to national levels through soft money, and especially the provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel." Steinlight adds: "For perhaps another generation... the Jewish community is thus in a position to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas." Steinlight is the recently-retired director of national affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
As well as campaign contributions, the Israel lobby's power is exercised through influence on government appointments. Until recently, Democrats and Republicans differed in their attitude to the lobby but now both parties are significantly influenced by it, although in different ways.
Historically, Jewish-Americans have been part of the Democratic coalition and they remain the only white ethnic group which consistently votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. By contrast, between Eisenhower and the elder Bush, many Republicans shared the attitude attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to a former Republican secretary of state: "Fuck the Jews. They don't vote for us anyway." Influenced by big business and the oil industry in particular, Republicans often tilted towards the Arabs (Arab regimes, not voiceless Arab populations). Although Nixon, an anti-semite in his personal attitudes, rescued Israel in the 1973 war, Eisenhower infuriated the Jewish-American community by thwarting the joint seizure of Egypt's Suez Canal by Israel, Britain and France in 1956. Another Republican president, George Bush Sr, enraged the Israel lobby during the Gulf war by pressuring Israel not to respond to Iraq's missile attacks, choosing not to occupy Baghdad and promising America's Arab allies that the US would push Israel on the Palestinian issue. The elder Bush was the last president to criticise the lobby publicly, in September 1991, when he complained that "there are 1,000 lobbyists up on the Hill today lobbying Congress for loan guarantees for Israel and I'm one lonely little guy down here asking Congress to delay its consideration of loan guarantees for 120 days."
The Democrats exploited this split between the Israel lobby and the first Bush administration. In an address to AIPAC in May 2000, presidential candidate Al Gore recalled, "I remember standing up against Bush's foreign policy advisers who promoted the insulting concept of linkage, which tried to use loan guarantees as a stick to bully Israel. I stood with you, and together we defeated them." In 1997, Fran Katz, the deputy political affairs director of AIPAC, became finance director of the Democratic national committee; the previous year, the former chairman of AIPAC, Steve Grossman, had become national chairman of the Democratic party, telling the press, "My commitment to strengthening the US-Israel relationship is unwavering."
Clinton also appointed Martin Indyk, a veteran of a pro-Israel think-tank associated with AIPAC, as ambassador to Israel, only a few years after this Australian citizen received his US citizenship papers. It is true that Clinton (and Indyk) took the Palestinian cause seriously and the US administration did push Israel further than it wanted to go on some issues prior to the Wye River agreement and in the failed Barak-Arafat negotiations. But the fact that so many of the senior US administration officials involved in those failed negotiations had ties to the Israel lobby raised troubling questions about the ability of America to act as an honest broker.
Furthermore, leading members of the Israel lobby encouraged the greatest abuse of the presidential pardon power in American history-Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich, a fugitive billionaire on the FBI's Most Wanted list who had surrendered his US citizenship rather than pay the taxes he owed. A Who's Who list of the Israeli and Jewish-American establishments successfully lobbied Clinton to pardon Rich, including prime minister Ehud Barak, the former head of Mossad and the head of the US Anti-Defamation League (many of the same individuals also supported a pardon for the imprisoned American spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard). In a New York Times piece in February 2001, Clinton claimed he had done it for Israel: "Many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programmes in Gaza and the West Bank."
Most Jewish-Americans are politically hostile to George W Bush, whose alliance with the Christian right disturbs them. Yet the younger Bush has, in practice, been influenced more by the Israel lobby than by the oil lobby. The State department of Colin Powell, who has described himself as a "Rockefeller Republican" and supports Palestinian statehood, has rapidly lost influence to the Defence department, where a cadre of pro-Israel hawks allied with Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz has seized the initiative. AIPAC's advertising for its April 2002 conference, whose keynote speaker will be Ariel Sharon, describes an invitation-only "president's cabinet brunch": "In an elegant brunch session at the St. Regis Hotel, Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gives an insider's view of the Pentagon's efforts in the war on terrorism."
Richard Perle, chairman of Bush's quasi-official defence policy board, co-authored a 1996 paper with Douglas J Feith for the Likud prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," it advised Netanyahu to make "a clean break from the peace process." Feith now holds one of the most important positions in the Pentagon-deputy-under-secretary of defence for policy. He argued in the National Interest in Fall 1993 that the League of Nations mandate granted Jews irrevocable settlement rights in the West Bank. In 1997, in "A Strategy for Israel," Feith called on Israel to re-occupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control" even though "the price in blood would be high." On 13th October 1997, Feith and his father were given awards by the right-wing Zionist Organisation of America, which described the honorees as "the noted Jewish philanthropists and pro-Israel activists."
The radical Zionist right to which Perle and Feith belong is small in number but it has become a significant force in Republican policy-making circles. It is a recent phenomenon, dating back to the late 1970s and 1980s, when many formerly Democratic Jewish intellectuals joined the broad Reagan coalition. While many of these hawks speak in public about global crusades for democracy, the chief concern of many such "neo-conservatives" is the power and reputation of Israel. William Kristol, editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard, explained the reason for the rhetoric about global democracy to the Jerusalem Post (27th July 2000): "I've always thought it was best for Israel for the US to be generally engaged and generally strong, and then the commitment to Israel follows from a general foreign policy."
The liberalism and Democratic partisanship of most Jewish-Americans forces the Zionist right to find its popular constituency, not in the Jewish community itself, but in the Protestant evangelical right of Pat Robertson and others-many of whose members share the Christian Zionism of the early British patrons of Israel. In 1995, after I exposed the anti-semitic sources of Pat Robertson's theories about a two-century-old Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy in an essay in The New York Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, denounced me rather than Robertson. Podhoretz conceded that Robertson's statements about Jewish conspiracies were anti-semitic but argued that, in the light of Robertson's support for Israel, he should be excused according to the ancient rabbinical rule of batel b'shishim.
Like other lobbies whose power is based on campaign money and appointments, the Israel lobby has influence chiefly over elected officials and their staffs. It has little ability to influence career public servants, such as those in the military, the intelligence agencies and the foreign service. At most, it can try to de-legitimise such officials when they do not play along by, for example, vilifying members of the US foreign service as "Arabists." And the uniformed military is often attacked in the pages of pro-Israel journals whose writers (most of them armchair generals who never served in the military) denounce the alleged pusillanimity of American soldiers who are unwilling to "take out" states like Iraq and Iran that particularly threaten Israel. Even the intelligence community has been accused of anti-semitism, for its principled opposition to a pardon for the spy, Jonathan Pollard.
The aborted career of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman provides a troubling example of this dynamic at work. After Clinton nominated Inman, a career Naval officer and the former head of the national security agency, for the position of secretary of defence, Inman was savaged in the press by William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter and conservative Republican who thought George Bush Sr was insufficiently pro-Israel. In his New York Times column Safire damned Inman for having "contributed to the excessive sentencing of Jonathan Pollard," Israel's spy in the naval intelligence service (whom some Jewish-Americans treat as a martyred saint). Inman responded by charging that Safire had secretly lobbied the CIA Director, William Casey, to overrule a 1981 decision by Inman, then deputy CIA director, which limited Israel's access to US intelligence. For this reason, Safire attacked Inman in the New York Times by charging him with an "anti-Israel bias." Rather than face what he called the "new McCarthyism," Inman withdrew.
After campaign contributions and high-level appointments, media influence is the third major asset of the Israel lobby. The problem is not that Jews in the media censor the daily news; there are passionate Zionist publishers like Mort Zuckerman and Martin Peretz, but their very ardour tends to discredit them. The reporters of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the television networks are reasonably fair in their coverage of the middle east. The problem is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is presented in the absence of any historical or political context. For example, most Americans do not know that the Palestinian state offered by Barak consisted of several Bantustans, criss-crossed by Israeli roads with military checkpoints. Instead, most Americans have learned only that the Israelis made a generous offer which Arafat inexplicably rejected. To make matters worse, the conventions of reporting the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mainstream press typically portray the Palestinians as aggressors-"In response to Palestinian violence, Israel fired missiles into Gaza." No reporters ever say, "In response to Israel's three-decade occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian gunmen fought back against Israeli forces."
Still, many journalists reporting from the middle east, both Jewish and non-Jewish, try hard to be objective. It is not in the news stories, but in the opinion pages and the journals of opinion-which ought to provide the missing context-that propaganda for Israel has free reign. There are several widely-syndicated columnists and television pundits who are apologists for the Israeli right, like Safire, Cal Thomas, George Will and Charles Krauthammer. Others like Anthony Lewis, Flora Lewis and Thomas Friedman do criticise right-wing Israeli governments, but anything more than the mildest criticism of Israel is taboo in the mainstream media.
The taboo against anti-Arab bigotry, however, is weak. One of the saddest consequences of Israel's colonialism has been the moral coarsening of elements of the Jewish-American community. I grew up admiring Jewish civil rights activists for their sometimes heroic role in the fight to dismantle segregation in the US. But today I frequently hear Jewish acquaintances discuss Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, in terms as racist as those once used by southerners in public when discussing blacks. "Israel should have given the Palestinians to Jordan after 1967," a Jewish editor recently said to me, in the same tone used by an elderly white southerner who once told me, "We should have left them all in Africa." The parallel can be extended. After 1830, the defence of slavery and later segregation in the old south led white southerners to abandon the liberal idealism of the founding era in favour of harsh racism and a siege mentality. Since 1967, the need to justify the rule of Israel over a conquered helot population has produced a similar shift from humane idealism to unapologetic tribalism in parts of the diaspora, as well as in Israel. It is perhaps no coincidence that the most important non-Jewish supporters of Israel in the US today are found in the deep south among descendants of the segregationist Dixiecrats.
Within part of the Jewish-American population, the influence of Zionism appears to be increasing. This is a recent phenomenon. Traditionally, non-Orthodox Jewish-Americans have been divided among three broad traditions: universalist liberalism, Marxist radicalism and ethnic Zionism. The first tradition has been of enormous value in American history. Jewish activists and philanthropists have played an invaluable role in supporting the extension of civil rights to Americans of all races, religions, and both genders. But Jewish liberalism is a victim of its own success. Having eliminated barriers to Jewish advancement in American society, like the quotas limiting Jewish students in Ivy League universities and prestigious clubs, Jewish liberals are tending to disappear through assimilation. More than half of Jewish-Americans marry outside the Jewish community and their children tend not to be raised as Jews.
The attrition of Jewish numbers by assimilation and intermarriage is producing alarm among Jewish-Americans devoted to preserving Jewish distinctness, by means of conservative religious observance, ideological Zionism, or both. Many have given up secularism for observant religion in recent years (Joseph Lieberman, Al Gore's vice-presidential candidate, is the most famous). Ironically, many neo-traditionalist Jews now express a bitter hostility toward the very secularism and pluralism that used to be identified by anti-semites with emancipated Jews. "Most American Jews have two religions, Judaism and Americanism, and you can't have two religions any more than you can have two hearts or two heads," wrote Adam Garfinkle, editor of the National Interest, in the journal Conservative Judaism. Indeed, there is a parallel between the rise of Jewish fundamentalism in the US and Israel and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Muslim world. In both cases, reactionaries believe that their traditions are being destroyed by secular western values, including feminism, religious tolerance and natural science. In both the Jewish and Muslim cases, the antidote that is offered to "corrupting western values" is pre-modern religious law-the Jewish law or the sharia.
Ethnocentric political Zionism as the basis of Jewish identity is more appealing to many former leftist and liberal Jews in the US than the adoption of a stringent Orthodox Jewish lifestyle. But making political Zionism the basis of Jewishness imposes a stark dual loyalty, as Stephen Steinlight argues in the essay I have quoted. "I'll confess it, at least: like thousands of other typical Jewish kids of my generation, I was reared as a Jewish nationalist, even a quasi-separatist. Every summer for two months, for ten formative years during my childhood and adolescence, I attended Jewish summer camp. There, each morning, I saluted a foreign flag, dressed in a uniform reflecting its colours, sang a foreign national anthem, learned a foreign language, learned foreign folk songs and dances, and was taught that Israel was the true homeland. Emigration to Israel was considered the highest virtue... Of course we also saluted the American and Canadian flags and sang those anthems, usually with real feeling, but it was clear where our primary loyalty was meant to reside... That America has tolerated this dual loyalty-we get a free pass, I suspect, largely over Christian guilt about the Holocaust-makes it no less a reality."
The restraint on robust debate about Israel in the political centre means that the most vocal critics of Israeli policy and the US Israel lobby are found on the far left and the far right. Critics on the left, like Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, are not taken seriously outside of left-wing academic circles because their condemnations of US and Israeli policy in the middle east are part of ritualised denunciations of all US foreign policy everywhere.
On the far right, the so-called old right, represented by Patrick Buchanan, there has always been a coterie of writers who mingle their denunciations of Israel and the Israel lobby with rants against secular humanists, homosexuals, feminists, third world hordes and other alleged enemies of a white Christian America. The lunatic fringe represented by the militia movement that spawned Timothy McVeigh refers to the federal government as ZOG-the Zionist-Occupied Government. This kind of demonology is also found among black nationalists, like Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.
It is only a small exaggeration to say that, if the far right hates Israel mainly because it hates Jews, the far left hates Israel mainly because it hates America. With critics like Chomsky, Buchanan and Farrakhan, the Israel lobby has an easy time persuading most Americans that critics of Israel are lunatic-fringe figures. Israel has also been fortunate in its Palestinian enemies. Yasser Arafat is no Gandhi or Mandela, Palestinian suicide bombers are indistinguishable from the al Qaeda fanatics in their tactics, though not their cause, and footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets on learning of the 11th September attacks appalled Americans otherwise sympathetic to the goal of Palestinian independence.
None the less, the Israel lobby's influence on US policy and public opinion is challenged by groups ranging from the increasingly vocal Arab-American lobby and black Democrats (who tend to sympathise with the Palestinians), to career military and foreign service personnel and the Republican business establishment, particularly oil executives, who are more interested in the Persian Gulf than in the West Bank. In the long run, the relative diminution of the Jewish-American population, as a result of intermarriage and immigration-led population growth, will combine to attenuate the lobby's power.
At present, however, members of Congress from all regions are still reluctant to offend a single-issue lobby that can and will subsidise their opponents; many journalists and policy experts say in private that they are afraid of being blacklisted by editors and publishers who are zealous Israel supporters; top jobs in the US national security apparatus routinely go to individuals with close personal and professional ties to Israel and its American lobby; and soldiers and career diplomats are sometimes smeared in whisper campaigns if they thwart the goals of Israeli governments. In these circumstances, how could US policy not be biased in favour of Israel?
The kind of informed, centrist criticism of Israel which can be found in Britain and the rest of Europe, a criticism that recognises Israel's right to exist and defend itself, whilst deploring its brutal occupation of Palestinian territory and discrimination against Arab Israelis, is far less visible in the US. What is needed at this moment in American and world history is a responsible criticism of the US Israel lobby which, unlike the left critique, accepts the broad outlines of US grand strategy as legitimate and which, unlike the critique of the far right, is not motivated by an animus against either Jewish-Americans or the state of Israel as such.
In the past, the Israel lobby had one feature which distinguished it from, say, the Irish lobby: the country it supported was threatened with extinction by its neighbours. That is no longer the case. Moreover, most Americans would support Israel's right to exist and to defend itself against threats even if the Israel lobby did not exist. However, in the absence of the Israel lobby, America's elected representatives would surely have made aid to Israel conditional on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. It is this largely unconditional nature of US support for Israel that compromises its middle east policy.
In the years ahead, we Americans must reform our political system to purge it of the corrupting influence, not only of corporations and unions, but also of ethnic lobbies-all of them, the Arab-American lobby as well as the Israel lobby. As the percentage of the US population made up of recent immigrants grows, so does the danger that foreign policy will be subcontracted to this or that ethnic diaspora encouraged-by the success of the Israel lobby-to believe that deep attachment to a foreign country is a normal and acceptable part of US citizenship.
Public policy cannot prevent bias toward foreign countries among ethnic voting blocs, although assimilation can weaken it. By contrast, ethnic donor machines can be all but eliminated by the regulation of political donations. Campaign finance reforms in the US that ban out-of-state and out-of-district donations, or replace private with public funding, are desirable on their merits. Among their other benefits, reforms like these would cripple all national pressure groups that rely on donations rather than on debate, without unfairly singling out any particular special interest, like the Israel lobby. In addition to campaign finance reform, the US needs to curtail the number of appointed positions in national security agencies. Reducing the number of "in-and-outers" in the national security elite would reduce opportunities for those affiliated with ethnic lobbies and economic interests like the oil industry, to affect US foreign policy from within government. Until Americans have ended this corruption of our democratic process, our allies in Europe, Asia and the middle east will continue to view our middle east policy with trepidation.
The truth about America's Israel lobby is this: it is not all-powerful, but it is still far too powerful for the good of the US and its alliances in the middle east and elsewhere.
From:
David Irving's ActionReport
[images added by this website]
Nixon, Billy Graham make derogatory comments about Jews on tapes
BY JAMES WARREN
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - (KRT) - Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a "stranglehold" during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released Thursday by the National Archives.
"This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," the nation's best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life.
"You believe that?" says Nixon after the "stranglehold" comment.
"Yes, sir," says Graham.
"Oh, boy," replies Nixon. "So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it."
"No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," replies Graham.
Later, Graham mentions that he has friends in the media who are Jewish, saying they "swarm around me and are friendly to me." But, he confides to Nixon, "They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."
The newly released tapes cover the first six months of 1972, with the Vietnam War and the upcoming presidential campaign the backdrops for many conversations. The tapes touch subjects as varied as using a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam (a notion quickly derided by adviser Henry Kissinger) and settling a West Coast dock strike.
They also include all of the famous "smoking gun" conversation about the Watergate break-in, known for its damaging disclosures about a cover-up and its 18 1/2-minute gap.
The Nixon-Graha