It is not only about Palestine
Israel Shamir about a new paper by Joachim Martillo
Joachim Martillo wrote an important paper called
Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society, purporting to
explain, “What the Israel Lobby Really Is”. He spoke with Stephen Walt, of Walt
and Mearsheimer fame, he followed the discussions of Philip Weiss, he
corresponded with Noam Chomsky and Joseph Massad, he had read Israel Shamir’s
Pardes and James Petras, he knows MacDonald. An American scholar
Martlllo has some Polish background, and he reads Yiddish and Polish, as well as
some Hebrew. In his view, understanding the Israel Lobby can be based only on a
thorough hardnosed (“non-exceptionalist”) analysis of Eastern European Jewish
history. This is a heretical view, very close to ours.
It is heretical, because the very far away border of
permitted antizionist discourse still remains short of discussion: whether Jews
did similar things before Zionism, or do we have a temporary aberration
connected with the state of Israel. The moment one integrates modern Jewish
behaviour with the pre-modern Jewish behaviour, the moment one notices
continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the
safe ground of condemning occupation, - one crosses into totally forbidden
“antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came with strong
and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are
neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists,
Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish
the Constitution in all but name to create a society of servitude for all
Americans except for those belonging to the hyper-wealthy transnational Zionist
political elite.
This is exactly our view: Palestine is a symbol, a
quintessence of the trouble, but the real issue is our enemy’s attempt to
enslave the world. Martillo begins where Walt and Mearsheimer end their journey.
In his view, in order to understand Jews, it is not necessary to venture into
days of Jesus Christ; history of Poland will do. He goes to the days of
Rzeczpospolita, the Polish Commonwealth (from 1505 until 1795), then ethnic
Ashkenazim constituted economic elite of the realm. They lost this status in the
partitions of Poland. This is the destroyed Temple, in Martillo’s view, these
are good old days the Jews miss: they want to be the elite like they were in the
days of Rzeczpospolita. Jews did well after the collapse of the Polish
Commonwealth, notes Martillo, but not as good as they would like.
“Despite supposedly onerous Czarist oppression, Russian Jews
had higher incomes, more education, and longer life spans than the non-Jewish
populations among whom they lived. They were highly disaffected because of
exclusion from the status and access to which they believed they were entitled,
but they were not obviously more oppressed than the majority of the Czar's
subjects and less oppressed than others. Yuri Slezkine belies the myth of Jewish
powerless during the lead-up to WW2 in
The Jewish Century.”
In the US, the Jews (or Ashkenazim, in Martillo’s
terminology) resurrected their social structure and rebuilt it, like ants who
rebuild anthill after being removed to a new ground. This structure is
ostensibly “Israel advocacy” or “Israel Lobby” but actually advocating Israel’s
cause (“Israel Lobby proper”) is a small part of its effort. He soberly states
that a USA, whose dominant elite is Jewish, is not necessarily bending to the
Israel Lobby proper when it pursues of pro-Israel foreign policy. The State
of Israel may be a client state of America, but America is a client state of the
American Jewish Zionist elite, which is probably in the process of establishing
itself as the permanent national "meritocratic" elite.
Jews succeeded to act together because historically Eastern
European Jewish culture strongly controlled social and intellectual deviation.
Many of the social control mechanisms continue to exist, have evolved in the
American environment, and may help explain why liberal Jews have so empowered
the Neocons to the detriment of US foreign policy interests as
James Petras has described.
It is not necessary to look for Freemasonry, the Elders of
Zion, the Illuminati, dark Talmudists, malicious Cabbalists, or some other group
of secret puppeteers: Israel lobbying activities constitute a natural evolution
of Jewish, especially ethnic Ashkenazi, communal organizations. The structure of
Israel lobbying is a response to historical developments generally unrelated to
Zionism. Because there has been a sort of Darwinian selection in both the
official and unofficial organizations as well as in their techniques, all of
which go back often as much two centuries in European environments, Israel
lobbying is naturally far more effective than a lobby that was put together over
the last few decades or so in response to a specific issue or to serve a
specific corporate interest.
The same question applies today. Does the so-called "Israel
Lobby" merely act to secure the interests of the State of Israel or is the real
goal enhancement of the wealth, status, and power of those who pay for it? Not
only does Israel not pay the "Israel Lobby," but The Israel Lobby and US Foreign
Policy does not give a hint who really does, and in any case large sections of
the "Israel Lobby" like the Hollywood Crowd do not even appear in the book even
though scholars like Melani McAlister have investigated the Hollywood foreign
policy connection in books likes Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S.
Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000. With such gaps in the analysis of the
"Israel Lobby," no one should be surprised with the weakness of the proposals
that Professors Mearsheimer and Walt make for responding to the "Israel Lobby."
Friedmanites have been so prominent in the economic regime
that the occupation has attempted to impose on Iraq that the common
identification of Milton Friedman's economic thinking merely with Cato Institute
libertarianism looks incorrect. In today's political intellectual environment
Friedmanism looks more like an adjunct of Neoconservatism.
Israel Lobbying in Comparison with Ordinary Lobbies
Martillo notices that the Jewish lobby has many interests
quite unconnected with Israel but equally nefarious:
In Boston the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Justice
(JALSA), which is a spin-off of the American Jewish Congress, has an ongoing
project in regendering American society according to feminist and gay liberation
principles.
Israel lobbying efforts benefit from organizational memory
that does not exist in other lobbying situations. The longevity of Jewish
Federation organizations can give Israel Lobbying efforts a generational aspect
not seen elsewhere. For example, Israel Advocacy organizations worked for fifty
years to delegitimize Arabist points of view in the foreign service and state
department, drive out Arabist officers or bureaucrats and replace them with
Israel sympathetic personnel (see The Marginalization of U.S. Mideast Experts,
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/1095/9510080.htm ).
Possibly because of long-standing relationships with
government officials, because of the fear of the accusations of anti-Semitism,
or simply because Jews are disproportionately represented among government
officials especially in the legal and regulation enforcement divisions (another
class of saya`nim), Israel advocacy is unique among lobbying efforts.
While the American public has not fully comprehended the
nature of power relations, Israeli leaders do, and the American Zionist elite
calls all shots on issues of importance to the American elite from "Who is a
Jew" to whether the USA should attack Iraq or Iran first.
The political relational hierarchy and the domination of an
American Zionist elite over all validate the Finkelstein and Massad critiques of
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.
The alliance between Israel and the US states is in the
process of creating an internal American caste system that will be dominated by
a small class of hyper-wealthy Zionists. With the sort of permanent war that has
been envisioned since the beginning of the twentieth century by a segment of the
Zionist elite under the influence of Sorel and with the application of the
Friedmanite Shock Doctrine as described by Naomi Klein, this caste system will
spread globally. (See The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by
Naomi Klein.)
The Israeli economy or more properly a small segment of
hyper-wealthy Israeli Jews linked by family and business relations to the
dominant US Zionist elite is thriving as the US economy is tanking and Iraq is
being ground down. It is the outcome of which leading Zionists dreamed in the
twenties, and it has a high probability of spreading from the ME throughout the
Muslim world to South America, and to parts of the former Eastern block.
The Kremlin, which has never had much tolerance for internal
competing power centers or external powers mucking in its backyard, saw danger
in the extension of a transnational hyper-wealthy Zionist political elite to
Russia and has taken preventive action against Jewish oligarchs within the
territories of the former Soviet Union. It was stunning how quickly Jewish and
Friedmanite groups rushed to support Mikhail Khodorkovski in his power struggle
with the Russian government.
Among religious, leftist, and right wing ethnic Ashkenazim
there has long been a current of thought that Jews are safest in alliance (or
better in dominating) an undemocratic government. Thanks to the Patriot act and
other actions of the Bush administration, the undemocratic Zionist future is
coming into being right before our eyes, and McCain looks like the most likely
of current present candidates to bring about the fulfillment of the ultimate
globalized Zionist dystopia, but Zionists throughout the political system are
poised to influence any other possible victor except Ron Paul, whom Zionist
facilitators and gate-keepers in the US media are trying to starve of media
attention.
Abolishing Israel and eradicating Zionism would not
eliminate the exploitive tendencies of globalization but would destroy the focal
point of the forces that are aiming for the worst of all globalized futures.
The Zionist movement assumed from its earliest phases that it
would be dependent on wealthy and influential Jews in the Diaspora. Members of
the Counsinhood of Britain's wealthiest Jews probably paid for the Balfour
Declaration. After the propaganda reverses of the first Intifada, the need for
an even wealthier and more influential class of Jewish Zionists in the USA
became obvious.
[In this strategic framework, the Zionist movement also
depends on Jews, who are not necessarily wealthy but are in critical positions
to serve the Zionist movement especially in intelligence or logistics matters.
Such individuals are today called saya`nim. The spy Jonathan Pollard is a
particularly egregious saya`an, who was caught. I have expanded the meaning of
the term in this document to include Jewish stealth helpers in Israel Lobbying
efforts.]
In addition to saya`nim, Zionists have often used
Shabbesgoyim like Orde Wingate during the pre-State period or more recently John
McCain III and his father Admiral John McCain, Jr., who absolved Israel of blame
in the attack on the USS Liberty. (See
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/01/money-jews-brain-jews-politics.html .) The
Zionist movement has tended to recruit and reward Shabbesgoyim in families. New
York Zionist campaign contributions have rewarded John McCain throughout his
political career. Today McCain represents the Neoconservative Friedmanite
position in Republican politics without — until recently — a lot of the social
conservative baggage to which many American Jews and Friedmanites object.]
Zionist connections in the investment banking industry led to
earlier IPOs in the 90s with little or no evidence of profitability. Subprime
mortgages were a similar class of dubious investments, whose true nature was
obscured in CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), and the valuation of Google
and similar companies like Facebook has similar dubious characteristic. Some
serious forensic analysis and financial analysis is needed to understand these
economic developments, but the end result has been very clear in the development
of a new class of superwealthy that is mostly Jewish and willing to put a lot of
money into Israel advocacy and into influencing the US government.
While many members of this New Jewish Elite would reflexively
put money into Israel because of long Zionist indoctrination, they also need
Israel as a means to hide their wealth because Israel has a level of economic
transparency and corruption comparable to Italy or Egypt. The Bar-Lev line in
Tel Aviv is an early indicator of the degree of embezzlement and sweetheart
deals in Israeli economics and politics. Israelis have long made a lot of money
in providing money laundering and other transaction hiding services both to Jews
and non-Jews. Obviously, all parties in this sort of business have an interest
in preserving the State of Israel to make sure that this sort business
continues.
Post-9/11 Islamophobic scare-mongering as well as the Iraqi
occupation has created a growth industry in hardware and software for security,
control, and checkpoints. This industry understands that its profitability
depends on international policies that maintain conflict through unconditional
support of Zionism.
A Web of Influence, Conditioned Thinking and Reflexive
Behavior
Ongoing Zionist indoctrination of the American public has
produced a Zionist web of influence, conditioned thinking and reflexive behavior
that is breath-taking in its pervasiveness.
Even without the presence of media gatekeepers and
facilitators, journalists in print, broadcast and cable media almost invariably
misrepresent relevant Middle Eastern or Eastern European current events or
history. There is little reluctance to turn Zionist or IDF press releases into
news reports with no qualifications.
American news organizations almost invariably misquote and
mistranslate Iranian President Ahmedinejad, and America media use tendentious
Zionist language like the "right to self-defense," "Muslim extremism," and "Arab
intransigence" while almost never conceding a similar right of Palestinian or
Arab self-defense or addressing issues of Jewish racism, extremism or
fanaticism. During the recent Lebanon war, the American media with rare
exceptions took the Israeli point of view.
Only recently have American media begun to concede the role
of Russian Jews in the Russian Revolution and the murder of the Czar's family.
While scholarly journals discuss the Jewish role in the Soviet security
apparatus before the end of WW2, no inkling of the Soviet Jewish role in mass
murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide is allowed to reach the general public.
Such facts would interfere with the Zionist legitimization narrative which
requires European Jews to be innocent powerless victims of the German Nazis, and
reasonable people would drawn the obvious analogy between Soviet Ashkenazi and
Zionist Ashkenazi ethnic cleansing or genocidalism.
Only occasionally does accurate depiction of Zionist ethnic
cleansing in 1947-8 ever reach the American public, and descriptions of the
start of the 1967 war — even on NPR — still include descriptions of the movement
("barreling") of Egyptian tanks through Sinai to attack Israel.
Roman Catholics according to statistical analysis are less
sympathetic. It is intriguing that practically every time the Boston Globe runs
a story that features a Catholic cleric expressing a criticism of Israel, within
approximately a week, it also runs a story about a Catholic cleric sex scandal
sometimes featuring events from as much as 25 years ago as if to provide some
crude sort of "balance" that even CAMERA and HonestReporting do not advocate. It
is an often-unconscious behavior more often associated with an angry ethnic
press, and it may be significant that the Boston Globe Editorial Board includes
Lawrence Harmon, who was editor at the Boston Jewish Advocate, and that paid
entry level newspaper jobs in the USA nowadays seem to be found mostly at the
ethnic Jewish press.
The hyper-wealthy Zionist elite is trying to create Israel
Studies programs in which only Zionistically correct scholars will teach while
stealth and overt Israel advocacy groups and individuals attempt to drive any
scholars critical of Zionism from American education. (See
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/09/jacob-lassner-and-nadia-abu-el-haj.html.)
Nadia Abu el Haj, Finkelstein, Arun Gandhi, Massad, Dabashi,
Saliba, Debby Almontaser (Khalil Gibran International Academy, New York City)
and many others have been subjected to such attacks. (See
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/11/zionism-penisism-and-joseph-massad.html,
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/02/arun-gandhi-and-sholem-aleichem.html,
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/conspiracy-against-rights-in-nyc.html.)
Altogether Israel Lobbying efforts are grinding down American
Constitutional rights and Israelizing society to the point where the American
political system is under attack by a wide-ranging seditious conspiracy, and the
side-effect of Islamophobic and Arabophobic incitement against Arab or Muslim
investments or university contributions or charitable donations, is discouraging
the flow of capital from Saudia and the Gulf when the US economy most
desperately needs such liquidity.
Even if American gets over the current economic crisis, the
alliance with Israel at this point has probably cost every current US taxpayer
at least $10,000.00, and the costs at this point are rising at least
geometrically thanks to Neocon-orchestrated policies.
Fighting Back to Save America
Pointing out the cost of Israel to each and every American is
a good starting point to counteract Israel lobbying and advocacy.
The Zionism of Christian evangelical fundamentalists is part
of generational program of Jabotinskians but is not particularly deep.
Obviously, Rapturists do not care much about the cost of Israel to America, but
Christian Zionism can be fought by scriptural disputation, by questioning the
patriotism of its leaders and by exposing surreptitious Jewish funding and
organizing.
In other areas Israel advocates have had so much success
because in today's America Jews play by a set of rules completely different from
all other Americans, and even not particularly Zionist Jews have no real
incentive to challenge the system, when renders them Moral Arbiters, Major
players in a dramatic narrative of national rebirth, Beneficiaries of programs
like Taglit (Birthright Israel), Jewish networks in academia, the professions
and politics, Certain of their own righteousness, and Wielders of the
all-powerful accusation of anti-Semitism.
At the college level, the International Hillel Society acts
like a junior auxiliary to the KKK by running racist programs like
Taglit/Birthright Israel and by hosting extremist speakers that incite murder
and genocide against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims or deny that they are
human.
Jewish organizations, no matter how much they campaign
against laws and candidates, get a completely pass of the rules and regulations
of 501(c)(3) organizations. The tax fraud probably reaches tens of billions of
dollars at this point.
Neutralizing Israel lobbying and advocacy groups will be
extremely difficult without a push for the US government to enforce laws equally
for Jews and non-Jews. Then once a good part of the American public realizes
that Israel is a terror state, the USA will be forced to apply anti-terror laws
apply and seize assets of organized Jewish community along with those of Zionist
billionaires as terrorism supporters just as Islamic charities have been
stripped of their funds.
•Until the US government begins to enforce laws equitably,
activists will have to research real estate transactions and investigate who is
paying for Israel advocacy programs. They will have to put together a who’s who
of Zionist subversion in the USA.
To change the consciousness of Americans, activists must
fight American Holocaust religion and work for recognition that the mass murders
of Jews during WW2 were not exceptional or unique,
that Palestinians, Armenians, Balkan Muslims, and Circassians
have all been genocided from the nineteenth through the twentieth century and
that Soviet Jews were up to the eyeballs in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and
genocide long before German Nazis, Eastern Europeans, and liberated Soviet
nationalities began to kill Jews systematically out of fear and hatred resulting
from the Jewish role in the Soviet Union.
Activists will have to challenge American Jews socially at
interfaith activities, community events and elsewhere. They must demand
clarification of Jewish loyalties and force Jewish leaders to acknowledge that
Americans are not obligated to support Israel and that hating Jews for what they
do (unlike hating Jews for being Jews) is not anti-Semitism.
Activists need to make effort to counter Israel advocacy and
Holocaust studies at the high school and even grammar school levels. They need
to work for coordination among anti-Zionist Arab American, Muslim American,
genuinely anti-Israel Jewish American, conservative, liberal, and other
religious (especially Catholic) groups.
Bottom line: Joachim Martillo came to the same conclusion as
Israel Shamir and James Petras, namely, it is not only about Palestine.
And we have to deal with it, if we want to liberate Palestine, or stay free
wherever we are.