James Petras: The Deadly Embrace

Zion-power and War: From Iraq to Iran
The Deadly Embrace
James Petras
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/Contributor62.htm

Introduction

Explanations for the US attack on Iraq range from military-political
pretexts to accounts focusing on geopolitical and economic interests.

The original official explanation was the now discredited
claim that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological and other
weapons of mass destructions (WMD), which threatened the US, Israel
and the Middle East. Subsequent to the US military occupation, when
no WMD were discovered, Washington justified the invasion and
occupation by citing the removal of a dictator and the establishment
of a prosperous democracy in the Arab world. The imposition of a
colonial puppet regime, propped up by an imperial occupation force of
over 200,000 troops and irregular death squads, which have killed
close to a million Iraqi civilians, forced over 4 million into exile
and impoverished over 95% of the population, puts the lie to that line
of argument. The latest line of justification revolves around the
notion that the US occupation is necessary to `prevent a civil war'.
Most Iraqis and military experts think the presence of the US colonial
occupation army is the cause of violent conflict, particularly the US
military's devastating attacks on civilians, their financing of rival
tribal leaders and Kurdish mercenaries and their contracting of local
police-military to repress the population. Since most Americans (not
to speak of the rest of the world) are not convinced by these specious
arguments, the Washington regime rationalizes its continued war and
occupation by citing the need for a colonial military victory to
maintain its world and regional status as a super-power, and to assure
its Middle East client regimes that Washington can defend their ruling
cliques and their hegemonic ally, Israel. The Bush White House and
pro-Israel Congressional leaders claim a victory in Iraq will bolster
Washington's image as a successful global `anti-terrorist'
(anti-insurgent) regime. These post-facto justifications have lost
credibility as the war drags on, popular resistance grows in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia, Thailand, Philippines,
Pakistan and elsewhere. The longer the war continues, the greater the
economic cost and the demoralization and depletion of military
personnel, the more difficult the task of sustaining the capacity to
intervene in defense of the empire.

If the official political and military justifications for
the US colonial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ring hollow and convince
few, what of the other economic explanations for the war put forth
mostly but not exclusively by critics of the Bush administration?

The major focus of the economic determinists of the war centers on the
issue of oil, as in `war for oil'.* These explanations in turn break
down into several variants: The first and most popular is that the big
US oil companies were behind the war, that Bush and Cheney were
pressured by their Big Oil handlers into launching the war so that US
oil companies could seize the nationally-owned Iraqi oil fields and
refineries. A second, slightly modified, version argued that the
White House was not pressured by Big Oil but acted on their behalf as
a reflex action. (This is put forth to explain why the spokesmen for
Big Oil multinationals were so conspicuously absent from the media and
halls of Congress in the lead-up to the war.)

(* see recent statements in September and October by former Federal
Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan and US General John Abazaid among others)

A third version argued that the US went to war to secure
oil for US national security interests threatened by Saddam Hussein.
This explanation cites the danger of Saddam Hussein closing down the
Strait of Hormuz, invading the Gulf States, inciting revolts in Saudi
Arabia and/or reducing the flow of Middle East oil to the US and its
allies. In other words, the `geopolitics' of the Middle East dictated
that a non-client regime was a threat to US, European and Japanese
access to oil. This is apparently the latest argument put forth by
Alan Greenspan, a former proponent of the WMD propaganda.

The major advocates of the `war for oil' (WFO) argument
fail several empirical tests: Namely that the oil companies were not
actively supporting the war via propaganda, congressional lobbying or
through any other policy vehicle. Secondly the proponents of WFO fail
to explain the efforts by major oil companies to develop economic ties
with Iraq prior to the invasion and were in fact, working through
clandestine third parties to trade in Iraqi oil. Thirdly, all the
major oil companies operating in the Middle East were mainly concerned
with political stability, the liberalization of the economic policies
of the region and the opening of oil services for foreign investors.
The big oil companies' strategies were to advance their global
interests through the on-going liberalization process in the Middle
East and conquering new markets and oil resources through their
formidable market power – investments and technology. The onset of
the US invasion of Iraq was viewed with anxiety and concern as a
military action, which would destabilize the region, increase
hostility to their interests throughout the Gulf and slow down the
liberalization process. Not a single CEO from the entire petroleum
industry viewed the US invasion as a positive `national security'
measure, because they understood that Saddam Hussein, after over a
decade of economic and military sanctions and frequent bombing of his
military installations and infrastructure throughout the Clinton
years, was not in a position to launch any acts of aggression against
Gulf oil companies or states. Moreover the oil companies had several
real prospects of developing lucrative service and commercial oil
contracts with Saddam Hussein's regime in the lead-up to the war. It
was the US government pressured by the Zionist Power Configuration
(ZPC), which pushed legislation blocking (through sanctions) Big Oil
from consummating these economic agreements with Iraq.

The argument that Big Oil promoted the war for its own
benefit fails the empirical test. A corollary to that is that Big Oil
has failed to benefit from the US occupation because of the heightened
conflict, continuous sabotage, the predictable resistance of the Iraqi
oil workers to privatization and the general insecurity, instability
and hostility of the Iraqi people.

The American Left jumped on Alan Greenspan's declaration
that the Iraq war was about oil, as some kind of confirmation in the
absence of any evidence. Yet everyday that has transpired since the
beginning of the war five years ago, demonstrates that `Big Oil' not
only did not promote the invasion, but has failed to secure a single
oil field, despite the presence of 160,000 US troops, thirty thousand
Pentagon/State Department paid mercenaries and a corrupt puppet
regime. As of September 19, 2007 the Financial Times of London
featured an article on the conspicuous absence of the `Oil Majors' in
Iraq: "Big Oil Plays a Waiting Game over Iraq's Reserves' (September
19, 2007). Only a few small companies (`oil minnows') have contracts
in Northern Iraq (`Kurdistan'), which has only 3% of Iraq's reserves.
`Big Oil' did not start the Iraq war, nor has `Big Oil' benefited
from the war. The reason why `Big Oil' did not support the war is the
same reason they haven't invested after the occupation: "The level of
violence is still unacceptably high…if anything the prospects of
agreement appears to be receding as tensions between parties grow."
(ibid) `Big Oil's' worst nightmares leading up to the
Zionist-influenced war have all been utterly confirmed. Whereas `Big
Oil's' negotiations and third party deals with pre-war Iraq provided a
stable and consistent flow of oil and revenue, the war has not only
reduced these revenues to zero, but has all but eliminated any new
options for the next decade.

Despite the war, liberalization elsewhere in the region has proceeded
and US oil and financial interests have advanced despite the increased
obstacles and hostilities, which have grown out of the US slaughter of
Muslims.

Big Oil, Texas billionaires, even big contributors to the
Bush family political campaigns were no match for the ZPC when it came
to Middle East war policy. They lacked the inside and outside power,
the disciplined grass roots organization of Jewish community
organizations to overcome the Zionist warmongering power over
Congress, their position in strategic executive offices and their army
of academic scribes from Harvard, Yale and Hopkins churning out
bellicose propaganda in the US media. What is striking about the
position papers and op-ed reprints in the Daily Alert is the total
absence of any deviation from official Israeli pro-war positions:
Whether it is killing children in Jenin, bombing population centers in
Lebanon, shelling Arab families relaxing at the beach in Gaza, the
Daily Alert simply echoes the official Israeli line and blatant lies
about human shields, accidents, gunmen among school children,
self-induced atrocities. Never in the entire period analyzed is there
a single critical article questioning Israel's massive displacement of
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. No crime against humanity is
too great for the Presidents of the Leading American Jewish
Organizations to defend. It is this slavish obedience to the official
Israeli policy that marks out the Zionist Power Configuration as
something much more than just another lobby as its `left' apologists
and even Walt and Mearsheimer claim. The ZPC is much more sinister
both as a transmission belt for the policies and interests of a
colonial power hell-bent on domination in the Middle East and as the
most serious authoritarian threat to our democratic freedoms: no
single individual who dares criticize can escape the long hand of the
pro-Israel authoritarians. Book sellers are picketed, editors are
intimidated, university presses and distributors are threatened,
university presidents are blackmailed, local and national candidates
are browbeaten and smeared, meetings are cancelled and venues are
pressured, faculty are fired or denied promotion, corporations are
blacklisted, union pension funds are raided, theater performances and
concerts are cancelled. And the list of repressive actions taken by
these authoritarian Zionist organizations at the national and local
levels runs on, arousing fear among some, anger among many more and a
slowly burning resentment and growing awareness among the silent majority.

The second geo-political version of `oil for war' focuses
on the national security issues. After the First Gulf War in 1991 and
eleven years of economic sanctions and military disarmament, Iraq was
an impoverished, weak nation partially dismembered by the US backed
Kurdish enclave in the north and constant US bombing and over flights.
Iraq was severely bombed several times during the Clinton regimes and
over 1 million of its citizens, including an estimated 500,000
children, died prematurely from conditions related to the US imposed
deprivation of food and essential medical and water treatment
supplies. Before the invasion in 2003 Iraq did not even control its
shorelines, airspace or even a third of its national territory. As
the US invasion demonstrated, Saddam's military lacked the most
elementary capacity to mount any defense in a conventional war, not
even a single fighter plane presented a threat to any offshore US
client or to the Strait of Hormuz. The stiff resistance to the US
came later in the form of irregular forces engaged in guerrilla
warfare, not from any organized force established by the Baathist
regime. In other words no matter how far the concept of `national
security' is stretched to include US military bases, oil nstallations,
client rulers and transport and shipping lanes in the Middle East,
Saddam Hussein was clearly not a threat. If however the concept of
`national security' is re-defined to mean the physical elimination of
any potential opponent of US and Israeli domination in the region,
then Saddam Hussein could be labeled a national security threat. But
that takes the discussion of the explanation for the US war against
Iraq to another terrain and a discussion of the political forces who
manipulated the phony WMD and `War for Oil' propaganda to justify a
war for US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Even more
important the disinformation campaign about who was responsible for
the US invasion and occupation of Iraq is highly relevant to the
current propaganda blitz driving us toward a war with Iran.

From the Iraq War Cover-up on to Iran War Propaganda

The pro-Israel power configuration beats the war drums for
an assault on Iran with greater insistency and successfully induces
the Democratic Congress and Presidential hopefuls as well as the
Republican White House to "put the military option on the table."
Parallel to overt war propaganda, a number of liberal critics of the
Iraq war have published articles arguing that Israel "really opposed
the Iraq war." Writers as diverse as Gareth Porter, ex-CIA analyst
Ray McGovern, Colonel Wilkerson (Colin Powell's Aide), ultra Zion-Con
Michael Ledeen and others claim that Israel opposed the war because
they wanted the US to target Iran. Others argue that Israel had
advised the US that an invasion of Iraq would have dire consequences
for the Middle East, tipping the balance toward Iran and which they
now claim to have predicted. These Israel-exonerators point to other
culprits, namely Bush-Cheney-Rumsfelt or the American Neo-Cons (better
known as the Zion-Cons) who, they insist, have acted independently of
Israel or ignored Israeli priorities in the region.

There is an alternative view, which argues that Israel promoted the US
attack on Iraq, did all in its power through its US pro-Israel
followers to design, propagandize and plan the war. This alternative
view sustains that at no point did the Zion-Cons act contrary to
Israeli state interests. In fact, Israeli officials worked on a daily
basis with its US agents inside the government, particularly the
Pentagon's Office of Special Plans to provide disinformation to
justify the military attack. If, as we will show, Israel was deeply
involved in pushing the US to attack Iraq and is behind the current
disinformation campaign to provoke a US war against Iran, then
anti-war forces and US public opinion must openly confront the `Israel
factor'.

We will argue that the exoneration of Israel is mainly an
attempt to deflect US public hostility away from those Israel Firsters
who manipulated us into this costly, bloody unending war. Exoneration
of Israeli responsibility for the US invasion of Iraq allows the
Jewish state and its US agents to escape any blame for the degradation
of US forces in Iraq and provides them a `clean moral slate' for
launching a new bloody US attack against Iran. Rather than seeing
Israel as giving us a double dose of an incurable colonial disease,
exoneration allows Israel and its agents to follow the same Iraq
invasion pattern of manipulation and duplicity in leading us to war
with Iran. The White House and Democratic Congress, echoing Israel,
are using inflated threats of nuclear attack, demonizing Iran's
leaders, financing low intensity warfare through the training and
funding of violent Iranian exile-based clients, economic sanctions and
`failed' diplomatic maneuvers …to lead up to a new war. Taking
advantage of their liberal (Zion-lib)-led exoneration for their role
in the invasion of Iraq, the Zionist Power Configuration, through such
loyal mouthpieces as Senator Joseph Lieberman, blame the Iranians for
the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq. It is not the Zionist pro-war
officials in and out of the government who sent young American
soldiers to die in Iraq at the behest of the Israeli state to whom the
US public should direct its anger, but rather the Iranians who are
accused of arming and training Iraqi resistance fighters. Leaving
Israel out and bringing Iran into the debacle in Iraq serves the
Israeli purpose of covering their backsides while inciting Americans
into a new military adventure against the much larger and better-armed
Iranians.

The exonerators of Israel are not homogeneous in their
political background or goals. Some liberals, fearful of arousing a
powerful Zionist backlash, seek to whitewash Israel's lobby operatives
in the US as a way of gaining sympathy among pro-Israel Congressional
Democrats and financial backing from wealthy Jewish liberals critical
of the Iraq war. Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, following the
new Israeli script declared during a visit to Tel Aviv in 2006 that
the `the US invaded the wrong country!'

The price of the `exonerate Israel' strategy is to
overlook the powerful role that the Israel First lobby is playing in
bringing us to a new war with Iran as part of a sequence of invasions
promoted by Israeli strategists. These clever ploys are backfiring.
Playing to the prejudices of the liberal pro-Israel crowd in the
Democratic Party has lead to the current absence of any significant
anti-war movement against the Zionist-led propaganda and war-mongering
blitz against Iran.

There is no question that some anti-war Zion-Libs are trying to put
some distance from the Zion-Con/Israeli policymakers who promoted the
invasion of Iraq. But this does not come from any opposition to
another new and more dangerous military commitment. On the contrary,
the Zion-Libs criticize the discredited Bush-Cheney-Iraq policy in
favor of a new more aggressive war policy toward Iran. By exonerating
Israel and its transmission belt of organized local and national
Jewish and fundamentalist Christian organizations, the liberals
have not found allies for peace – they have revived the powerful
influence of Israel and its US apparatus which was being increasingly
rejected by the US public and elements in the US military. By putting
the blame for the debacle in Iraq exclusively on Bush/Cheney and their
allies in `Big Oil' and excluding the role of Israel, the ZPC and
their toadies among the Democrats in Congress, the liberal
exonerators, open the way for a new cycle of war in the Middle East.
To prevent a future Zionist and Israeli-orchestrated US attack against
Iran, we must be perfectly clear about who maneuvered the US into
attacking Iraq.

Israel, the ZPC and the Run-up to the Invasion of Iraq

Analytically, the differences between Israeli state policy and the
leading US Zionist organizations are, with very rare exceptions,
indistinguishable. The run-up to the US attack on Iraq is a case in
point. From the late 1980's, through the first Gulf War, the Clinton
Administration's sanctions, daily bombings and territorial separation
of northern Iraq, `Kurdistan', from the rest of the country, to the
2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Israeli government pressured US
Congress-people and senior policy makers toward bellicose policies
toward Israel's `enemies'. Israeli state policy urging further US
degradation of Iraq was transmitted through the major Zionist
organizations and key Zionist officials in the Clinton and later Bush
administrations. Dennis Ross, Martin Indyk, Madeleine Albright,
Richard Holbrook, Sandy Berger, William Cohen and others were the most
important foreign policy-makers toward the Middle East in the Clinton
Administration and they produced and implemented the sanctions,
bombings and territorial dismemberment of Iraq. Following their term
of office, key Clinton Zionists went to work at pro-Israeli think
tanks in Washington. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the
Zion-Cons in top level positions in the Bush Administration (Ari
Fleischer, Paul Wolfowitz, David Frum, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith,
Eliott Abrams, Irving (Scooter) Libby, David Wurmser and others) and
key Zionist Congress-members like Senator Joseph Lieberman, called for
the US to attack Iraq, as part of a series of sequential wars, to
include Syria and Iran. They echoed the policies of the Israeli state
and in particular Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Israeli state officials, at no point expressed any reservations or
differences with the bellicose efforts of its highly placed liaison
agents in the Bush Government, nor with its servile lobby, AIPAC, nor
with the pro-Israel Op-Ed writers of the major newspapers and
broadcast media. Zionist ideologues prevailed everywhere berating the
US military officials for their timid caution. Israel, consistent
with its policies since the late 1980's, encouraged the Bush
Administration toward an invasion and occupation of Iraq in all of its
top level meetings with Rumsfelt, Powell, Rice and Bush. The Israeli
media, with rare exceptions, demonized Saddam, played up his `threat'
to the Middle East and Israel's security, conflated Palestinian
suicide bombings with Iraqi support for the Palestinian people's
national aspirations, and energized their fundamentalist Christian
allies in the US to follow suit in calling for an invasion of Iraq.

An analysis of the relationship between the Israeli state
and highly placed Zionist officials in the Bush Administration reveals
first and foremost that Tel Aviv laid out the strategic policies of
eliminating Middle East regimes opposed to its ethnic cleansing of the
occupied territories and unlimited expansion of colonial settlements
in Occupied Palestine and the consolidation of Israeli hegemony in the
Middle East. The Zionist elite in the Bush regime invented the
pretext and the propaganda for war and most important, successfully
designed and operationalized the US invasion of Iraq. This `division
of labor' included the Zion-Cons in the executive branch, backed by
the Presidents of the Major Jewish American Organizations (including
AIPAC), the regional, state and local Jewish federations through their
influence over Congress.

Testimony by former Pentagon analyst, retired U.S. Air Force Lt.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski confirms that throughout the period leading
to the Iraq war, Israeli military officials, intelligence officers and
other high ranking functionaries had daily access with top Zionist
Pentagon officials like Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith.
Frequent consultation, intelligence coordination and joint planning
between top Zion-Cons in the Pentagon and top Israeli military
operatives in the US indicates that there was close agreement in
directing the US to invade Iraq. There was Zion-Con/Israeli agreement,
confirmed in the immediate aftermath of the initial `successful'
occupation, that Iraq was the first of a series of invasions in the
Middle East, to be followed by attacks against Iran and Syria. The
Israeli joke current at the time was: `Anyone can take Baghdad, real
men go for Tehran.' In November 2002, Ariel Sharon, in an interview
with the Times of London, called for the bombing of Iran `the day
after the US invades Iraq'.

The Zion-Con/Israeli blueprint for sequential wars was
explicitly stated in the policy paper "Project for a New American
Century', a kind of American-Israeli Mein Kampf of US world domination
in which Israel would be a co-benefactor of American military might
and treasure. Most of the Zion-Con designers and executers of US war
policy in the Middle East were listed as authors or sponsors of the
`New American Project'. Many were also contributors to the policy
paper for Likud leader, Benyamin Netanyahu, which specifically called
for the dismemberment of Iraq into manageable ethnic enclaves.

Israeli intelligence `disinformation' about Saddam
Hussein's `threat' to the region was embellished and adapted to the
propaganda needs of the White House. While Israeli propaganda pounded
away at `Saddam Hussein' as the modern Hitler, Zionist propaganda
chief and Bush speechwriter, David Frum, repeated the same theme in
the infamous `Axis of Evil' speech in which Bush pronounced before the
world his intention to attack other nations preemptively. Given the
Israeli regime's pro-war propaganda it is understandable that Israeli
public opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the war as were all the
leaders of the major American Jewish organization, but not the
majority of American Jews, especially young Jews and those who were
not members of any of the Zionist (Israel First) front organizations.

Israeli advisers and Zion-Cons in the US government were highly
influential in the dismantling of the entire civilian and military
administrative structures in Iraq – the so-called De-Baathification
campaign – in order to decisively weaken any attempt to reconstruct
Iraq as a modern secular republic opposed to Israeli regional
hegemony. The Israeli policy, pursued by the Zion-Cons, was to
fragment the Iraqi state and society into pre-modern ethno-religious
entities run by pro-Israeli Iraqi exiles (like Ahmed Chalabi who had
business ties with Douglas Feith), incapable of ever challenging
Israeli policy in the Middle East.

Israeli Zion-Con policy succeeded in so far as it secured the US
destruction of the Iraqi state; but it failed to secure a rapid
victory on the road to the second phase of invading Iran, because
of the massive armed resistance by the Iraqis. In their blind racism
against Arabs, the Israeli officials and their American agents
discounted any possibility of Iraqis mounting a people's war against
the destruction of their society. As the Iraqi resistance gained
momentum and US military and economic losses multiplied, US public
opinion turned against the war and began to ask who was responsible
for the military debacle. In the face of this potentially dangerous
question Zionist propaganda shifted gears in order to cover their
tracks. Top Zionist official who framed the war quickly left the
scene, beginning with the most obvious war perpetrators: Paul
Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Shumsky in the Pentagon and David Frum
and Ari Fleischer in the White House. The hardliners with less overt
profiles in the State Department stayed on for a while longer– Elliot
Abrams, Scooter Libby, David Wurmser. Libby later was convicted of a
felony for his role in exposing the CIA operative married to
Ambassador Joseph Wilson in retaliation for his exposing his Zionist
cohorts' fabrication of `intelligence' in the lead up to the war.

War with Iran: The Highest Priority for the ZPC (and Israel)

Israel's campaign for the destruction of Iran has already led to two
acts of war. In June 2006 Israel assaulted Lebanon, aiming,
unsuccessfully, to destroy the Shiite political-military organization
Hezbollah, an ally of Iran. A little more than a year later (Sept 6,
2007) Israel engaged in an even more provocative act, an unprovoked
bombing mission over Syrian territory, destroying a military
installation. Since Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact, the
Israeli action was designed to test the willingness of Iran and Syria
to respond to a surprise (sneak) military attack.

The propaganda arm of the Israeli intelligence services prepared a
piece of disinformation comparable to their earlier weapons of mass
destruction lie: They claimed that they bombed a nuclear site which
North Korea was constructing and supplying with nuclear material.
Israeli disinformation was immediately reproduced verbatim in the
leading US newspapers, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street
Journal and the New York Times and all the major television networks.
Pro-Israeli propaganda experts justified the attack and were in turn
quoted in the Washington Post (Sept 20, 2007). The Post quoted Bruce
Riedel, formerly an intelligence `expert' at the pro-Israel Saban
Center for Middle East Policy (housed in the now discredited Brookings
Institute): "There is no question it was a major raid. It was an
extremely important target. It came at a time the Israelis were very
concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects
of war (sic). The decision was taken despite their concerns it could
produce a war (sic). The decision reflects how important this target
was to Israeli military planners." In other words, Israel is
concerned about war" so it engages in an unprovoked act of war in
which the propagandists don't even know the nature of the target!

On September 21, 2007, the principle propaganda sheet (Daily Alert) of
the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) then
reproduced the pro-war propaganda cycled through the Washington Post
and sends it out to all top officials and Congressmen in Washington
and across the country and activated its lobbyists in AIPAC to ensure
US support for the blatant Israeli act of war. True to its deceptive
propaganda function, the Daily Alert published a highly misleading
excerpt from an article in the Financial Times (September 21, 2007
p.4), which combines the Israeli propaganda line of a `potential'
Syria-North Korea nuclear tie without including several paragraphs
debunking the Israeli-Zionist disinformation campaign. The Financial
Times article quotes Joseph Circcione, Director of Nuclear Policy at
the Center for American Progress: "It is highly unlikely that the
Israeli attack had anything to do with significant Syrian-North Korean
nuclear cooperation. The basic, well-documented fact is that the
40-year-old Syrian nuclear research program is too basic to support
any weapons capability. Universities have larger nuclear facilities
than Syria," (Financial Times September 21, 2007, p.4). A former
senior Asian adviser to President Bush and expert on North Korea, now
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also debunked
the Israeli-Zionist nuclear weapon ploy: "I would be very, very
surprised if the North Koreans were dumb enough to transfer fissile
material to Syria or were trying to do work outside of North Korea in
a place like Syria", (ibid). Equally damaging to the Israeli-Zionist
war propaganda, the Bush Administration never raised North Korea's
supposed involvement with Syria during the entire series of meetings
during 2007, despite the fact that it was greatly hostile to Syria and
looking for any excuse to attack it. In contrast to previous Israeli
provocations in which the Bush Administration rushed to vouch for
Israel's pretexts, Bush declined to comment on the Israeli attacks
against Syria, likely advised by his intelligence chiefs that it was
an Israeli act of provocation hoping to draw in the United States.

The Israeli act of war against Syria and its defense and promotion by
the US Zionist Power Configuration is the latest step in bringing the
US into a joint war against Iran and Syria. A survey of the Daily
Alert (the house organ of the Presidents of the Major American Jewish
Organizations) from January to September 2007 (180 issues) reveals
that there is an average of three articles in each issue calling on
the US to engage in acts of war, impose strict economic sanctions and
a naval blockade and prepare for a widespread confrontation with
Iran. There is not a single voice or article that questions Israel's
pro-war posture. Every issue of the Daily Alert parrots the Israeli
line, even when it involves supporting the brutal cutting of
electricity, gas and drinking water to over a million trapped
civilians in Gaza – a war crime under international law. In the words
of the Daily Alert, Israeli murders of unarmed teenage Palestinian
boys and girls who are labeled `militants' or `gunmen'. And the Daily
Alert describes Israeli `peace negotiations' as being carried out in
`good faith' – despite continued land grabs and assassinations of
scores of Palestinians, including young kids. "In the time between
George W. Bush, US President announcing the (Annapolis) peace meeting
on July 16, 2007 and October 15, 2007, the Israeli military had killed
104 Palestinians including 12 children." Financial Times (October 18,
2007 p.4)

After the November 2006 Democratic Party Congressional victory thanks
to the increasingly angry anti-Iraq war voters, Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Levi attended the AIPAC meeting in Washington to urge
the thousands of Zionist activists and a large contingent of US
Democratic and Republican congressmen to continue to support the Bush
Administration's occupation of Iraq and incited them toward another
war against Iran. In a highly charged screed, she ejaculated on the
non-existent "existential threat" of Iranian nuclear capability. The
entire Jewish Lobby picked up the line and went into action.

The scope, depth and centralized structure of the Zionist Power
Configuration far exceed anything, which can be properly conceived of
as a `lobby'. In that sense Mearsheimer and Walt in the study of the
Israel Lobby underestimate the power and political influence of the
pro-Israeli forces. Secondly the measure of the ZPC power must take
account of several factors. These include its direct and indirect
power. ZPC power is exercised directly on political, academic and
cultural decision makers to make sure their policies back pro-Israel,
pro-Zionist interests. An even more direct expression of power is
when Zionists occupy top decision-making positions and make policies
on behalf of Israeli military and economic interests. Elliot Abrams,
President Bush's key Middle East advisor on the National Security
Council is one of many examples as is the Director of Homeland
Security, Michael Chertoff, who allocates over three-quarters of
available funds for the `security' of private Jewish organizations.

Equally formidable is the ZPC exercise of indirect power through
several mechanisms.

One is by parleying influence over a small group of
Congressmen into a large majority. For example, AIPAC wrote up the
bill, presented by Senator Lieberman and co-signed by Senator Kyl,
labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as `terrorists', which paves
the way for Bush to launch an attack. It was passed by 80% of Congress.

Cumulative power is the convergence of different sectors of the
ZPC on a single issue. For example, pro-Israel writers and Jewish
leaders from all major organizations and spheres of its media from
Left to far Right, joined to denounce Mearsheimer and Walt's essay and
subsequent book, most resorting to either ad hominem attacks
(`anti-Semites') or illogical and convoluted arguments ignoring the
empirical data.

Propaganda of the deed is a favorite power tool of the ZPC. This
involves publicizing the successful punishment of critics of Israel
and the ZPC in order to intimidate current or future policymakers. An
example is how Ziono-fascist Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard
Law School successfully campaigned, with backing from the ZPC, ousted
Professor Norman Finkelstein from his university post, thus serving as
`exemplary punishment' to any future academic critics of Israel.
Dershowitz campaign went so far as to slander Professor Finkelstein's
deceased mother, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, as a Jewish
`kapo' or Nazi collaborator.

The ZPC has multiple resources that are mutually
re-enforcing in both the private, and public spheres. Large-scale,
long-term party and electoral financing buy Congressional influence.
This in turn increases the power of the large minority of Zionist
Congressmen in gaining control over party nominations and committee
assignments in Congress. This in turn feeds back into greater
influence for the ZPC in shaping US-Middle East foreign policy and
facilitating access of pro-Israeli writers to the Op-Ed pages of the
major dailies, weeklies and other branches of the corporate media.

Zionist power is also the result of a long-standing, pervasive and
totally one-sided propaganda campaign which demonizes Israel's Arab,
especially Palestinian critics, and paints Israel (the world's fourth
largest and Middle East's only nuclear power) as a democratic
fortress, surrounded by hostile authoritarian governments. Through
its access and partial control over most of the major media, the
Zionist Power Configuration provides heavily biased reports on events
such as the Israeli terror bombings of populations centers in Lebanon,
Gaza and elsewhere. Reputational power projected by the ZPC in the US
counteracts reality in the Middle East to the extent that Palestinian
victims of all ages and genders, suffering 40 years of Israeli
military rule, land expropriation and constant violent assaults are
made into aggressors and the Israeli executioners are portrayed as
virtuous, peaceful victims.

Israel Lobby or `Zionist Power Configuration'?

Mearsheimer and Walt describe the pro-Israel power configuration as a
`lobby, just like any other US lobby', a `loose collection of
individuals and groups' outside of government, acting on behalf of
Israel. Nothing could be further from the truth. The power of Israel
in the United States is manifested through a multiplicity of highly
organized, well financed and centrally directed structures throughout
the United States. The ZPC include several score political action
committees with innocuous names, at least a dozen propaganda mills
(`think tanks') employing scores of former highly connected top
policymakers mostly in Washington and the East Coast, and the 52 major
American Jewish Organizations grouped under the umbrella listing
`Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations'
(CPMAJO). AIPAC and other national organizations (ADL, AJC etc ) are
important influences at the national Executive-Congressional lobbying
levels. But equally or even more important in censoring and purging
critics, controlling local media and shaping opinion throughout
cities, towns and villages are the local Jewish community federations
and organizations which browbeat local cultural programmers, editors,
bookstores, universities, churches and civic groups to deny public
platforms to speakers, writers, artists, religious spokespeople and
other public figures critical of Israel and its Zionist disciples.

The power base of the ZPC is found in the local activist
doctors, dentists, lawyers, real estate brokers and landlords who
preside over the local confederations and their several hundred
thousand affiliates. It is they who harass, badger, browbeat, raise
money and organize propaganda junkets for elected officials and
ensure their support for Israeli wars and increases in the US
multi-billion dollar aid packages to Israel. The local Zionist power
structure organizes successful campaigns forcing state pension funds
to purchase billions of dollars in underperforming Israel state bonds
and to disinvest in companies engaged in economic transactions with
Israel's self-described `state terrorists adversaries'. It is the
Jewish based pro-Israel student organizations which spy on US
professors, who may or may not be critical of Israel and smear them in
local and national newsletters and pressure administrations to fire
them. Even where less than 1% of the local population is Jewish,
Zionist zealots are able to pressure small private Christian colleges
to ban a Nobel Peace Prize winning theologian, like Bishop Desmond
Tutu, from speaking on their campus. The Zionist octopus has extended
its tentacles far beyond the traditional centers of big city power and
national politics, reaching into remote towns and cultural spheres.
Not even the American small town obituary pages are exempt: When a
Connecticut newspaper published a memorial of a prominent Palestinian
grandmother and community leader from Hebron (May 2003) the 61 year
old Shadeen abu Hijleh, who was shot in her home by Israelis soldiers,
members of the local Jewish confederation expressed outrage at the
exposure of Israeli military crimes – thus censoring a moving obituary
page tribute written by her American friends and relatives.

Centralized structures – coordinated policy, targets, quotas, fund
raising, large-scale special campaigns, black lists (`anti-Semites'
and `self-hating Jews'), and networks all are integral parts of the
ZPC. Mearsheimer and Walt have failed to analyze the organizational
relations between the head office, regional staff and local
organizations of the major pro-Israel Jewish organizations and how
quickly they can be mobilized to stigmatize, censor or support a given
speaker, activity or fund raiser in favor of Israeli interests.

Throughout the country the newsletters of local Jewish Community
Relations Councils have parroted the line or reprinted libelous
canards of their national offices denouncing Mearsheimer and Walt's
book The Israel Lobby – and from their rather ill-informed caricatures
of M and W's discussion it is clear they have barely even read the
book's cover.

One thing is clear from the largely emotional ejaculations from the
predominantly Jewish intellectuals' attacks against the book, the
intellectual level of contemporary Jewish intellectuals has seriously
deteriorated to the point that envy, communal spite and partisan
vitriol has gotten the better of a reasoned review of data and logic.
The literary efforts by Abraham Foxman of the ADL to answer M and H
are reminiscent of the Stalinist diatribes featured during the Moscow
show trials of the 1930's (our Jewish version of Andrei Vishinsky).
What accounts for the influence of these intellectual mediocrities is
neither the evil vapors emanating from their venomous writing, nor
their appeal to reason – though some pretense to reasoned debate is
made by Zionist progressives – if such exist – but the fact that their
repetitious message circulate throughout their mass media outlets
uncontested.

The ZPC, having organized the war through falsified data,
via the top two officials in the Pentagon (Wolfowitz and Douglas
Feith), the Vice Presidents office (Wurmser and Irving Scooter Libby)
and the National Security Council (Elliot Abrams) organized the
President's office (Ari Fleischer) and written Bush's pre-emptive war
speech (David Frum) are now fearful they will face the anger of
the American people who have suffered the loss of thousands of
soldiers – to an extent not experienced by the authors and
implementers of this war for Israel. To avoid identification with this
disastrous war, Zionist Power Configuration War planners and
propagandists have resorted to lies (denial of the crucial role
of Israel in bringing the US to war) and the somewhat more clever
operators like Alan Greenspan have joined the mindless American left
to drag out the old canard of `War for Oil'.

War For Oil
or War For Israel: The Public Record

Zionist Power Configuration support for the Iraq War was an open,
relentless, propaganda campaign by well-known writers, publicists, and
community leaders as well as by the 52 leading Jewish organizations.
There was `no conspiracy' or `cabal' – the Zionist campaign was
brazenly public, aggressive and reiterative.

A systematic review of the major propaganda organ of the
Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organization's newsletter,
Daily Alert, from 2002 to September 2007 – 1,760 issues – provides us
with a scientific sample of ZPC opinion. On average, each issue
contained 5 articles in favor of the war or moves toward war with Iraq
and/or Iran. The Daily Alert featured op-ed articles by the major
liberal, conservative and Zion-fascist writers and academics which
regularly appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the
New York Sun, and the New York and Los Angeles Times, the Daily
Telegraph and Times of London, YNet and others. In other words, in
the crucial pre-war to post-invasion period, the leading pro-Israel
Jewish organizations produced approximately 8800 pieces of pro-Iraq
war propaganda and circulated it to all its member organizations,
every Congressman, every leading member of the executive branch with
follow-ups by local activists and an army of Washington lobbyists (150
from AIPAC alone) plus several hundred full-time activists from local
and regional offices.

In a comparable survey of the leading Anglo-American
business and financial newspaper, the Financial Times between 2002 and
September 2007, regarding Big Oil's policy toward war with Iraq and
now Iran is just as revealing. I reviewed the opinion, editorial and
letter pages of 1,872 issues of the Financial Times and there is not a
single article or letter by any spokesperson or representative of a
major (or minor) oil company calling for the invasion and occupation
of Iraq or the bombing of Iran. There was no oil lobby or grass roots
organization demanding Congress or the Bush Administration to go
to war in defense of US oil interests. But the ZPC was active,
promoting the lie that disarmed and embargoed Iraq represented an
`existential threat' to the nuclear armed Israel.

A similar comparison of Zionist and Big Oil regarding
propaganda for a US military confrontation with Iran reinforces the
argument of the centrality of the major Jewish organizations in
promoting United States involvement in Middle East wars for Israel.
Between 2004 and September 2007 (3 years and 9 months) the Zionist
propaganda sheet, the Daily Alert, published 960 issues in which an
average of 6 articles argued for an immediate or near future US or
Israeli preemptive military attack on Iran, tougher economic sanctions
than the Security Council was willing to support, organized
disinvestment and boycotts of Iran. A survey of the Financial Times
during the same period, 1053 issues, (the FT prints 6 times a week,
the Daily Alert 5 times), fails to produce a single letter or op-ed
article by any representative or spokesperson of Big Oil supporting
war against Iran. On the contrary, as was the case with Iraq, major
oil leaders expressed anxiety and fear that an Israeli instigated
war would destabilize the entire area and lead to the destruction of
vital oil installations, undermine transport routes and shipping lanes
and cancel lucrative service contracts. Contrary to the latest
Zionist propaganda, Big Oil wants the US to lift its sanctions against
investment in Iran, since it has lost lucrative deals to competitors.

In
complete contradiction to the `leftist' Trotskyist-Zionist finger
pointing at Big Oil as the main push for war, big Texas oil was
working profitable with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, signing hundreds of
millions of dollars in illegal contracts with the now executed ruler.
Oscar Wyatt, a Texas oil billionaire, recently convicted for paying
bribes to Saddam Hussein, was one of many big oil dealers involved in
the lucrative pre-war oil trade with Iraq (Financial Times Oct. 2,
2007, p.2).

Zionist Warmongering: Fear and Venom

As the pressure from Israel for a US-backed military
attack on Iran mounts, and as top US military officials and the
general public grow increasingly hostile to Zionist arm twisting and
gross manipulation of policy makers, the ZPC turns aggressively
authoritarian in its effort to silence opposition which exposes its
role as a disloyal actor for a foreign power. In the past, agents for
a foreign power, once detected, usually received severe sanction or
worse. Today, numerous Zionist insiders know they are playing an
increasingly risky game as the perceived costs of a new war with Iran
rise and their Israeli `handlers' press them to promote an attack Iran
at the top of their agenda.

Ultimately, the Zionist Power Configuration, despite their wealth and
current dominance over US Middle East policy, know that they represent
less than 1% of the population: They are an elite without a mass
base. They have power only as long as the other 99% of the population
is inactive, manipulated or intimidated to serve Israel's interests.
But as the growing flow of books, articles and speeches begin to call
attention to the Israeli-directed ZPC and their destructive
ar-mongering activities, their self-promoted images of their
members as brilliant professionals, successful leaders in the world of
business and finance and compassionate politicians serving the best
interests of the USA, begins to erode. The ugly side of their servile
loyalty to Israel, an arrogant, racist colonial power provoking wars
via the US to establish itself as an unchallenged regional power has
entered into the American public debate.

The ZPC is at or near the peak of its political power – in
Congress, the Executive, the Office of Homeland Security and
prospective Attorney General, in `culture' and the mass media
propaganda. But paradoxically, as the ZPC peaks, it also exposes more
of itself – much more than it wants to be seen by the American public.

Even the brash and impudent Zionist polemicists who hole up in the
prestigious universities and `think tank-propaganda mills' are
beginning to feel public anxiety, even perhaps private worries. As
they do so, they back track, trying to cover their fingerprints on all
the war plans and propaganda leading to the now-massively unpopular
invasion of Iraq. They resort to outright lies in the form of denials
or complicity or `war-mongering'. Outrageous denials abound! For the
more aggressive die-hard Zion-Cons, exposure of the disloyal role of
the ZPC and their complicity evokes savage rejoinders, academic
screeds in the gutter language of ad hominem abuse which reflects
poorly on their vaunted academic positions. The ZPC, its scribes,
operatives and power brokers are vulnerable – they have committed
great crimes against the interests of the American people. Their
actions have led to the death and maiming of tens of thousands of US
soldiers, 99.9% of whom have no `loyalties' to the interest of greater
Israel or its US agents who have their own children pursuing lucrative
civilian careers. Recent estimates found less than 0.2% of US
soldiers serving on the ground in Iraq are American Jews, some of whom
were Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. This despite the
strong Zionist pressure to invade and destroy Iraq and Iran. The
manipulations of the ZPC in pushing the Bush Administration into
invading and occupying Iraq has led the US military into an
unprecedented state of disgrace and demoralization, with thousands of
officers tendering their early retirement, thousands of troops going
AWOL and facing court-martial, and an increasing number of retired
senior officers expressing outrage. It is no surprise that Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates secured the support of top military officers
in the Middle East in opposing an immediate invasion of Iran.

Zionist vituperation against their critics expresses fears of exposure
and unmasking of their double discourse, their false amalgamation of
Israeli colonial policies with the democratic values of the American
people. Nothing else can explain the shrill verbal personal assaults
– aimed at killing the messenger rather than facing unpleasant
realities and working to rectify a disastrous situation. While the
state of Israel has placed its American promoters in an uncomfortable
position as the occupation of Iraq crumbles and Americans resist
shrill calls for attacking Iran, nevertheless Israel has turned
out to be the real winner, in the short term, having achieved the
destruction of the unified, secular republic of Iraq.

From a Scratch to Gangrene: The Transition from Zionism to Zion-Fascism

The `mainstream' Zionist conservatives early on
demonstrated their authoritarian politics through their whole-hearted
and un-problematical support for Israel's brutal campaigns driving
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands.
Subsequently, the Zion-Cons fully and un-questioningly endorsed the
killing and jailing of thousands of Palestinian civilians protesting
the Israeli military occupation and conversion of the occupied West
Bank and Gaza into `open air' concentration camps, with over 500
military outposts and roads blocks. More recently the entire
leadership of the major Jewish organizations, comprising both
Zion-Cons and Zion-Libs, defended Israel's building of a massive
30 meter wall, effectively corralling the entire Palestinian
population in ghettos resembling the walls constructed around the huge
Jewish population in Warsaw by the Nazis. The wall and the military
outposts strangle trade, movement of food and people from the occupied
territories to markets, schools and hospitals and prevent farmers from
even tilling their lands.

On Octobert 10, 2007 the Jerusalem Post quoted Aron
Soffer, head of research and lecturer at the Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF) National Defense College. The 71-year old father of 4 and
grandfather of 8 had said on May 21, 2004: "When 2.5 million people
live in a closed off Gaza, its going to be a human catastrophe. Those
people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the
aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border
will be awful. Its going to be a terrible war. So if we want to
remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day…every day."

This is the literal message of murder taught to Israeli officers at
their most advanced military school by eminent Zion-Fascist lecturers.
This helps us understand the naked brutality and homicidal behavior
of Israeli soldiers in the occupied territories.

A recent Israeli study by two prominent psychologists
illustrates the deep strain of sadism and racism inculcated by
Israel's military academies and backed by Israel's top politicians,
including the Prime Minister's Office. According to Haaretz on
September 21, 2007, two Israeli psychologists interviewed 21 Israeli
soldiers, who expressed "their innermost emotions about the horrendous
crimes, in which they took part: murder, breaking the bones of
Palestinian children, acts of humiliation, destruction of property,
robbery and theft."

One of the Israeli psychologists was "shocked to find that the
soldiers enjoyed the `intoxication of power' and had pleasure from
using violence." She said, "Most of my interviewees enjoyed their own
instigated violence during the occupation." (Haaretz September 21,
2007) Absolute colonial domination brings out the psychopathic
tendencies in an occupation army. Soldier C testified, "If I didn't
enter Rafah (Palestinian City in Gaza) to put down some rebellion – at
least once a week I'd go beserk." Like previous colonial occupiers,
the Israeli soldiers adopt a totalitarian `super-race complex'.
Soldier D testified, "What is great is that you don't follow any law
or rule. You feel that YOU ARE THE LAW. Once you go into the
Occupied Territory YOU ARE GOD!." The soldiers' internalization of
the powerful Zion-fascist ideology provides a self-justification in
the eyes of the interviewees for castrating a man, bashing in the face
of a woman protester, shooting an innocuous pedestrian, breaking the
arm of a 4-year old child and other `gratuitous' acts of random violence.

The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations
never ever mention, let along criticize, the daily psychopathic
behavior of the IDF. Major Jewish billionaire philanthropists
contribute hundreds of millions in support of the IDF's violent
occupation and repression of Palestinian civilians, described with
cruel pleasure by the soldier-subjects of the Israeli study. In fact,
the biggest Zionist contributor to the Democratic Party, Haim Saban
($12.3 million dollars in 2002), has a `soft spot for Israeli combat
soldiers.' According to Haaretz (September 12, 2006), Saban declared,
"I can't handle combat soldiers, whenever I have any interaction with
them…I cry." There is a powerful emotional bond that links Israeli
Zion-fascism to its US counterparts. Saban arrogantly points to the
primacy of his loyalty to Israel, "I strut around like a peacock in
America and say I am an Israeli-American. What you hear…an
Israeli-American." (Haaretz October 14, 2007). The formerly
respectable Brooking's Institute now houses the `Saban Center',
financed by Haim Saban, turning Brookings into just another of a dozen
propaganda mills churning out apologetics for the totalitarian
practices of the IDF – their leading research directors and their
Prime Minister. The deadly `sentimentality' of the Israeli-American
billionaires toward the psychopaths in the IDF does not extend to the
young Americans serving Israel's interests as US soldiers in Iraq and
who are suffering the burdens of a war to extend Israel's regional
power. Saban, like the great majority of the top leaders of the most
influential Zionist organization are pushing for another war – this
time with Iran. According to Saban, "I would try other things first,
but if they don't work, then attack…In Iran you go in and wipe out
their infrastructure completely. Plunge them into darkness. Cut off
their water." (Haaretz October 14, 2007). These are not the
homicidal ranting of a fanatical Jewish settler beating a
pre-adolescent Palestinian shepherd. Saban is a major leader in AIPAC,
family friend and political broker of the Clintons and the entire
current Israeli leadership. His $2.8 billion dollars buys the fawning
attention of all major US presidential "candidates courting Jewish
support" (MSNBC, October 14, 2007).

The Zionist Power Configuration has buried 3 top level
political initiatives designed to reach a settlement of the Israeli
colonial occupation of Palestine. A statement to President Bush and
Secretary of State Rice sent by former top political officials of both
political parties, including Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft
and others calling for Israel to abide by UN Security Council
Resolution 242 and 338 and other initiatives, was totally dismissed by
the Democratic Congress and the Republican White House, after the ZPC
intervened and labeled Brzezinski as `hostile to Israel' – following
the Israeli state's complete dismissal of the statement. Tony Blair's
efforts as head of the `Quartet Peace-Making Mission' has been a total
failure in resolving even the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians,
in the face of Israeli intransigence and rejection of any but the most
banal conversations with the now subdued (formerly so frenetic)
ex-British Prime Minister (Guardian October 13, 2007). Secretary
Rice's efforts to organize a Middle East peace conference for late
November in Annapolis, Maryland were diluted to the point of
pointlessness by Israeli pronouncements. Israel rejects any
substantive agreements on borders, timetables, Jerusalem, settlements,
territory etc.. They insist the conference focus on meaningless
general agreements that commit them to nothing. In action designed to
further humiliate US Secretary of State Rice, the Israeli government
illegally seized several hundred acres of Palestinian lands – a clear
example of extending the settlements (Aljazeera October 14, 2007).
While trying to appear stylish in a dunce cap, Secretary Rice
responded that the new Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land might
`erode confidence in the parties' commitment to a two state solution'
(BBC October 14, 2007).

Recognizing that the ZPC has completely tied up her negotiation
position, that she cannot demand anything substantive from Israel,
Secretary Rice has signaled the futility of the Annapolis meeting by
calling for `lower expectations', that is no agreements of substance.
There is good reason to believe that Israel and its Fifth Column have
effectively scuttled Bush's own Annapolis initiative. Even US clients
like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even the Palestinian puppet
Abbas have expressed doubts since there are no substantive agreements
on state boundaries, anathema to Israel and the ZPC. Whether the
conference is `postponed' or actually takes place, the event promises
to be another inconsequential gesture, another US Middle East defeat,
another victory for Israel's colonial status quo and another reason
for increased Arab resistance in the Middle East.

What is more ominous, Israel and the ZPC will find that their
successful sabotage of the White House Annapolis Peace Conference is
likely to encourage them to press ahead with further violent seizures
in the Occupied Territories, new more deadly incursions in Lebanon and
Syria and heightened pressure for war with Iran. Zion-fascism feeds
into the sense of irresistible power over US Middle East policy
against any major US institutional force, which fails to follow the
Israeli line.

Along with the right-wing radicalization of Zion-Con ideology with
regard to Israel's push toward totalitarian solutions, came overt
manifestations of racist anti-Islamic, anti-Arab and anti-Persian
practices and speeches from leading Zion-Con spokespeople and
especially academic propagandists in the United States.

War propaganda and military solutions dominate Zion-Con
rhetoric: first against Palestine, then Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon,
Syria, Somalia and Sudan. Accompanying the radicalization of Zion-con
rhetoric is a growing number of repressive acts within US society.

The ZPC and Holocaust Denial: At the Service of Israel

Leading Zionist Democrats following Israeli directives played a major
role in undermining a Congressional resolution condemning as genocide
the Turkish murder of 1.5 million Armenians. For many years the state
of Israel and its academic specialists both in Israel as well as in
the US have denied Turkish-led Genocide against the Armenians in their
ancient homeland between 1915-1917 despite the voluminous documentary
record complied by scholars throughout the world. One reason is that
the Jewish Holocaust industry insists on the exclusive franchise on
20th century genocide, in order to push its fundraising and propaganda
efforts. An even more important contemporary reason for Israeli and
US Zionist holocaust denial is the close military collaboration
between Israel and Turkey and more recently the heavy presence of
Israeli military advisers and secret police (Mossad) operations in
Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq, dubbed Kurdistan.

Former member of the Israeli armed services, `US' Congressman Rahm
Emanuel, Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, opposed the
resolution from the start and convinced a group of senior House
Democrats to demand the Democratic Congressional leadership drop plans
for a vote on the measure. Deeply implicated with the interests of
Israel, Emanuel has both feet in the terrain of an Israeli-defined
Middle East reality. Congressman Emanuel cynically rationalized his
service for the state of Israel in a convoluted statement: "This vote
(on the Armenian genocide) came face to face with the reality on the
ground in that region of the world." (NT Times, October 16, 2007) The
Israeli fifth column in the US Congress has extended the scope of its
control beyond narrow focus on the contemporary Middle East and
Israel's quest for regional dominance to encompass historical issues
involving non-Arab, non-Muslim people who indirectly affect Israeli
strategic interests. Israeli strategists see the Congressional
resolution on the Armenian genocide as provoking Turkish hostility to
the US, increasing the likelihood of an invasion against the US and
Israeli-backed `Kurdistan' in Northern Iraq. Israeli officials have
been training and arming Kurdish commandos to engage in terrorist
activities in Iran and elsewhere on the Turkish, Iranian and Syrian
border. A Turkish land invasion and aerial attack would, at a
minimum, destroy or disarticulate these terrorist bases and more
likely lead to a generalized Kurdish mobilization in defense of the
Kurdish irregulars. The Kurds are loyal clients and their Pershmerga
militias play an integral role in ethnic cleansing of non-Kurds in
Northern Iraq and savage repression in Central Iraq as US-led
mercenary forces against the Iraq Arab resistance. A Turkish invasion
is likely to result in the transfer of the Kurdish military toward
their Turkish frontier, undermining US control in Iraq and weakening
their assaults on Iran. The Israelis will have to choose between
its alliance with Turkey, its only consequential ally in the Middle
East, by withdrawing its operative and arms sales from `Kurdish'
Northern Iraq or its support for Kurdish separatists.

The entire ZPC was on maximum alert to block or defeat the Armenian
resolution in the US Congress in order to show the Turkish Prime
Minister Erdogan that Israel is using its power over the US Congress
on Turkey's behalf. In this conflict between, on the one hand,
millions of Americans who abhor genocide – wherever it occurs and
whoever is victimized – and the influential Armenian lobby, and, on
the other hand, a few dozen highly placed `Israel First' Congress
members and their billionaire Zionist political contributors, the
latter won out. Even on an issue as palpable as genocide, the ZPC has
no fear or shame in opposing a symbolic resolution recognizing a
world-historic crime.

The Zionist Congressional victory on the Armenian resolution
illustrates in the most graphic manner the way Israeli interests
degrades our institutions and values. The fact that many
Congress-members, including the majority of Democrats, were
initially convinced of the justice of passing the resolution, and
later under the pressure of the Zionist Congressional leadership,
withdrew their support, is indicative of just how far Congress has
degenerated into a Zionist colonized institution. Not only does
Congress ignore its electorate, the values of the people who elected
them, but also they surrender their own values and conscience, for
what Seymour Hersh aptly refers to as `New York Jewish money.'

The Israeli effort to head off a Turkish attack on their Kurdish
clients is closely related to their efforts to undermine Iranian
defenses and gain intelligence via terrorist `commando operations' by
Kurdish irregulars.

The centerpiece of activity for all the major national, state and
local pro-Israeli Jewish organizations is to isolate and destroy Iran,
by economic sanctions and a massive military attack by the US. There
is absolutely no consideration of the millions of Iranians who would
be killed, injured or made homeless by a US or Israeli effort to `wipe
Iran off the map.'

The major recipient of `New York (and Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago)
Jewish money' is Hillary Clinton, the most hawkish Democratic war
monger in the 2008 president race – in fact the most hawkish
Democratic candidate since the Vietnam era. Clinton, in a recent
article in Foreign Affairs, has all but written the date and weapons
with which the US will strike Iran. She argues that `Iran poses a
long-term strategic challenge to America and its allies and that it
must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons…" If Iran
does not comply, all options must remain on the table. (Guardian,
October 15, 2007).

Israel keeps a box-score on how servile US presidential candidates are
to Israeli state interests and obedient to the dictates of the Israel
lobby. Clinton, by far, is the Zionist choice among Democratic
presidential candidates. They have forgiven her for kissing Suha
Arafat over a decade ago, because she has kissed both cheeks of each
and all male and female Zionist lobbyists and Israeli officials in
Washington and applauded the repression of Palestinians. Clinton
aroused the passion and pleasure of the pro-Israel Presidents of the
Major American Jewish Organization by being the only Democratic
presidential candidate to support the Senate resolution calling on
the US government to declare the Iranian government's `Revolutionary
Guards', an elite division of Teheran's military, to be a `terrorist
entity', thus providing the Bush administration with a justification
for a massive pre-emptive attack against Iran and its infrastructure.

Both in terms of financing war resolutions and sanctions campaigns
against Iran, in terms of lobby authored legislation and
Congressional speeches, of hours campaigning for an attack on Iran, of
op-ed columns published and media pundits comments, the Zionist Power
Configuration exceeds by a multiple of ten any other group in pushing
for a war with Iran. Not only do the Zionist monopolize the `attack
Iran' propaganda, but they are leading all other authoritarian groups
in silencing US critics of this aggressive military option.

Let us be perfectly clear that the ZPC, the Presidents of
the Major American Jewish Organizations, the Rahm Emanuels
(Israeli-Americans) controlling the Democratic caucus agenda…do not
always and everywhere speak for the majority of American Jews,
especially on the denial of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.
Pugnacious ADL President Abraham Foxman found out in Watham,
Massachusetts that both the local Armenian-American community and
their Jewish-American compatriots and neighbors do not tolerate the
denial of genocide – even by the ADL. Substantial sectors of American
Jews object to Clinton's war mongering and find her servile truckling
to Israeli officials offensive, even obscene. Zionist polls reveal
the majority of educated young American Jews are less and less
interested in Israel and its local Fifth Column – much to the chagrin
of the self-styled `leaders' of the community. Saying that a Jewish
minority speaks in the name of an unwilling majority, however, does
not lessen its power and stranglehold over US political institutions
and public opinion with regard to policy or appropriations touching on
the Middle East or Israeli-defined interests.

"Jew-haters' became the agitation slogan animating the Zion-con purge
of public forums and a call for mass direct action by hundreds of
local Jewish notables and `community' councils. Even Presbyterian
elders were brow-beaten by Jewish Zionists because of their tepid
stand divesting from US companies involved in oppressing Palestinians.

There is no transcendent event, which defines the moment in which
Zion-conservation became Zion-Fascism. The transition was an
evolutionary process, during which racism, militarism and
authoritarianism developed a mass community base and took hold over
time and became the definitive modus operendi of the ZPC.

Like earlier fascist movements, Zion-fascism subscribes to racialist
doctrines of knowledge: According to Zionist epistemology only Jews
can (if they dare) criticize Jews as knowledge of Jewry is monopolized
by a closed communally defined people. This Zion-fascist theory of
knowledge is buttressed by the frequent utterances of progressive or
leftist Zionists who frequently dismiss or warn non-Jewish writers
that they enter the `Jewish' debate at their peril.

Zion-fascism is not merely an ideological expression of a marginal
group of unbalanced extremists – its ideology and practice, in full or
part, has been taken over by mainstream Jewish organizations.

Zionist Authoritarianism on the March

Grassroots Zionist-led authoritarianism, practicing coercion,
repression and financial blackmail in defense of Israel and the ZPC is
occurring in every region of the country, in every sphere of social,
cultural and academic life at an accelerating pace. Below we cite a
small sample of cases which have gotten national and even
international attention and which illustrate a far more extensive
pattern. We lack a comprehensive data bank to cover the hundreds of
incidents of Zionist intimidation and thought control which occur on a
weekly basis and go unreported by their victims for fear of
retaliation or because they would not receive sympathetic public
attention given the media bias. In informal interviews, writers and
journalists have reported to me `visits' by local Jewish `notables'
and members of the Jewish Community Councils to local newspaper
editors to demand the firing of columnists who dared to criticize, for
example, Israel's horrific invasion of Lebanon. After one such
`visit' and `talk', a local columnist never ventured to criticize or
even write about the Middle East. This is not a matter confined to
the United States. In 2004, after I wrote an article for the Mexico
City daily, La Jornada, critical of Israel's savage repression of
Palestinians in Jena and the US Zionist apology for mass killings, the
Israeli Ambassador in Mexico visited the editors to demand they
discontinue publishing my articles. The editor refused to accede at
that time, but immediately afterwards they published several vicious
personal attacks by their regular columnists (one a Troskyist, and the
other a Jewish dentist) labeling my critiques as `Nazi' propaganda ,
in line with the `Protocols of Zion'. This was in a reputed
independent progressive daily newspaper.

`Private visits', abusive phone calls by Zionist zealots, including
death threats are not uncommon practices among `respectable'
Zion-fascists. One incident involved a local doctor who received a
`visit' to her office by a fanatical Zionist `colleague' complaining
of her letter to the local newspaper criticizing the role of the
Zionists in financing the electoral defeat of Georgia Congresswoman,
Cynthia McKinney because of her criticism of Israeli policy. She was
`warned' that it was anti-Semitic to criticize the activities of
organized Jewry in destroying politicians, especially black
politicians, for their support of Palestinian civil rights. African
Americans, she was told, were increasingly ungrateful to American
Jews, who had lead and financed the civil rights struggle, and
therefore had to be taught a history lesson. A local `group' of
notables had chosen her Harvard-educated Zionist colleague to deliver
this message. When he declared himself `a Jew and a Zionist', she
countered that she was `an anti-fascist and an anti-Zionist' and
pointed to the door but not before asking him how an educated man of
high professional standing could stomach such a degrading task of
trying to censor a colleague. These types of `visits' from
`respectable' Zionists intimidate others with less standing and
intestinal fortitude.

When presented with the manuscript of my book, The Power of Israel in
the United States, many of my previous editors informed me that it
would make a great book…but…they didn't want to face the backlash,
threats and vituperation that they expected from the ZPC, Jewish
academics, writers on contract and publishers. Even the publisher and
editor who finally agreed to publish my MS expressed real fear of
Zionist hostility – and eventually a dozen or so Jewish academics
cancelled book orders for their classes.

A sample of the most publicized cases of Zionist efforts to silence
and purge American society of critics of Israel and the Zionist Power
Configuration includes the case of over one thousand Zionist alumni of
Barnard College campaigning to deny tenure to Professor Nadia Abu
el-Haj for publishing Facts on the Ground , her ground-breaking
critique on Israeli archeologists efforts to erase centuries of
continued Palestinian presence in the Holy Lands (Chronicle of Higher
Education, August 5, 2007).

More recently there was the public campaign to rescind Colombia
University's invitation to Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmedinejad
resulting in an unprecedented insulting introductory address by the
President of Colombia University.

Banning the successful British play, `My Name is Rachel Corrie' based
on the writings of the murdered American activist from scheduled
performances in New York, Miami and Toronto caused consternation among
theater goers and actors on both sides of the Atlantic. The Israeli
soldier who murdered the young woman was exonerated in Israel while
Rachel's words were banned from the cultural capital of her own
country.

Even more recently, the Chicago Council of Global Affairs bowed to
pressure from the Zionist lobby and cancelled a lecture by the
respected professors of political science, John Mearsheimer and
Stephan Walt because of their critical study The Israel Lobby.

The list goes on to include the cancellation of a concert by Marcel
Khalife in San Diego, California and the cancellation of an invitation
to Nobel Peace Prize winner, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu because
of his criticism of Israeli apartheid policies in the occupied
territories.

There was a successful campaign to prevent author Susan Abulhawa from
presenting her gripping novel, The Scar of David, at a Barnes and
Noble Bookstore in Bayside, New York. This was followed by a
cyberspace attack on the author to undermine a scheduled speaking
tour. This pro-Israel attack was led by 14 rabbis and the President
of the Queens Jewish Community Council.

The University of Michigan Press was pressured to withdraw
distribution of Joel Kovel's Overcoming Zionism, violating a contract
with his publisher, Pluto Press. The University Press then threatened
to stop distribution of all books published by Pluto Press.

The recent Congressional Hearings of a blue ribbon committee, which
finally got around to investigating the Israeli military attack on the
USS Liberty (after 40 years of successfully preventing an official
investigation through the pressure of the Israel lobby) found Israel
guilty of the deliberate killing and maiming of over 100 US service
personnel. Its explosive findings, published in the Congressional
Record, never appeared in the print and broadcast media.

In violation of United Nations resolutions, Israel's military
aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, were rewarded by the
US Congress with an additional $30 billion dollars in military aid
over the next 10 years, making the US annual `tribute to Israel' in
excess of $6 Billion dollars a year (NY Times, August 16, 2007). At a
time of record US deficits and cuts in domestic health programs for
poor children and educational services, the vote to give Israel an
additional $30 billion dollars passed with virtually no opposition or
even discussion.

Australian journalist and documentary maker, John Pilger produced a
searing critique of Israel entitled "Palestine is Still the Issue"
which has been viewed all over the world. Its scheduled showing on
the public educational channel in San Francisco was blocked by a
campaign led by the Jewish Community Relations Council.

The bilingual Arabic-English public middle school in New York City
named after the Lebanese Christian poet, Kahil Gibran, was attacked by
the ZPC (NY Times August 11, 2007) leading to the firing of its Arab
American Principal. Her `crime' was accurately translating the Arabic
word `intifada' into `shaking off' instead of ranting against the
Palestinian rights movement in the Occupied Territories. The
Zionist-controlled United Federation of Teachers actively backed the
blatant purge of one of its own members for her thought crimes.

At San Francisco State College there was a campaign led by the
executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San
Francisco to ban a mural depicting a famous Palestinian cartoon
character, a little boy defiant before Israeli occupiers. The subject
in question was a child holding a key in his hand, which, according to
the local Jewish leadership represented a `veiled reference to
Palestinian right of return to Israel' (Jewish Forum, August 10, 2007).

One of the most bitter and successful Zionist Purge campaigns was to
deny tenure to highly respected scholar, Professor Norman Finkelstein
of De Paul University in Chicago. The purge, led by Harvard Law
Professor Alan Dershowitz, was a direct response to Finkelstein's
numerous scholarly studies critical of Israel and the exploitation of
the Holocaust to further the aims of the Zionist Power Configuration.

Despite the recommendations of three academic committees at Yale
University, Zionist millionaire philanthropists were able to block the
appointment of renowned Middle East specialist, Professor Juan Cole.
The millionaires threatened to withdraw contributions and several
Zionist professors prepared a scurrilous attack on Professor Cole
(June 1, 2006).

A campaign was mounted to pressure several state pension funds to
divest funds from any company doing business with Iran and pushing the
funds to invest in Israel bonds. This has so far succeeded in Texas,
Florida, New York, and New Jersey. Several state governors were
`persuaded' while on Zionist-paid junkets to Israel (see Houston
Chronicle, July 18, 2007). During one of these junkets, the now
disgraced New Jersey Governor McGreevy met an Israeli operative with
whom he formed a homosexual relation and later had him installed as
`Homeland Security' Chief for the State of New Jersey, until the FBI
intervened. McGreevy resigned from office after denouncing the
Israeli, Golan Cipal, for blackmail.

The Anti-Defamation League, pro-Israel transmission belt, forced the
only Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, to recant and humiliate
himself for daring to compare the tactics of the Bush Administration
to the Nazis (Jewish Telegraph Agency, July 20, 2007). As in the case
of Congresswoman McKinney, Zionist `punishment' against
African-American politicians is particularly vehement.

The major Zionist organizations led by the American Jewish Committee
successfully mobilized the major US trade union bureaucrats to
denounce the United Kingdom's militant trade union's boycotts of
Israel (Jerusalem Post, July 22, 2007). The AFL-CIO unions are under
the thumb of the ZPC and have purchased over $5 billion dollars of
their members pension funds in Israel bonds which consistently
under-perform market indexes, thus costing their 12 million members
hundreds of millions of investment returns each year.

The dean of religion Barry Levin, a pro-Israel activist at McGill
University recently fired Professor Norman Cornelt after 15 years of
teaching for his support of Palestinian human rights (Montreal
Gazette, June 2, 2007).

Every major newspaper published editorials and scurrilous book reviews
attacking former US President Jimmy Carter's critical study,
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. This was part of a high-priority
propaganda campaign coordinated by major Zionist organizations and
prominently included Professor Alan Dershowitz (Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs, April 2007).

The prominent Jewish writer, Professor Tony Judt of New York
University was dis-invited from a scheduled talk at the Polish
Consulate because of Zionist opposition to his criticism of Israeli
policy.

B'nai Brith of Vancouver, Canada attacked a Canadian web site called
Peace, Earth and Justice forcing the removal of 18 articles critical
of Israel.

In early 2007 the ZPC intervened in the US Civil Rights Commission and
introduced a section equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and
slandered dozens of academic Middle Eastern studies programs as
centers of campus `anti-Semitism'. The Middle East Studies Association
of North America, the major academic group, wrote a reasoned
refutation on June 11, 2007.

Plans to construct a mosque for the Muslim community in Roxbury,
Massachusetts were attacked in a campaign by the `David Project', a
Zionist front group affiliated with the Jewish Community Council of
Greater Boston.

On the basis of secret testimony by Israeli intelligence agents and
backed by the ZPC `terrorism' charges were made against 16 members of
a US Islamic charity. A Texas court convicted them of `crimes'
against Israel, even though many of the accused were US citizens and
had no access to challenge their hooded accusers, Israeli secret
agents operating in the US. The lead defendant, Dr. Rafil Dhofer
received a sentence of 22 years for an `Israeli' crime – although he
was never convicted of any crime committed in the US. The defendants
and their attorneys were never allowed to question the secret foreign
`witnesses'.

Campus Zion-fascist organizations run by their `little fuehrer' David
Horowitz, routinely bait blacks, Latinos and Arab Americans by
praising the `benefits' of the African slave trade and defend the use
of torture and assassination by Israelis and their US counterparts in
Iraq and Guantanamo. In addition, they smear professors not
sufficiently favorable to Zionism, spy on instructors, disrupt
classes, bring lawsuits for `anti-Zionist' bias against teachers,
other students and college administrators throughout the US.

Despite the Zionist turn to fascist tactics and embrace of
authoritarian-coercive measures, the fact of the matter is they still
only have partial control over civil society and political power.
Some of the Zion-fascist power plays were, at least temporarily,
defeated in specific circumstances. The play, My Name is Rachel
Corrie played to packed houses in London, Seattle and other courageous
cities even as it was banned in New York, Toronto and Miami.

Norman Finkelstein was fired, but he got powerful support throughout
the academic world and was able to negotiate monetary compensation for
De Paul University's cowardly betrayal of one of its faculty. Above
all, Professor Finkelstein is fighting back.

The University of Michigan was forced to distribute Kovel's book even
as they threatened to cancel their contract with his publisher, Pluto
Press.

The lesson is clear: the rise of Judeo-fascism (JF) represents a
clear and present danger to our democratic freedoms in the United
States. They do not come with black shirts and stiff-arm salutes.
The public face is a clean-shaved, necktied, pink-jowled attorney,
real estate philanthropist or Ivy League professor. They work hard to
send the family members of non-Zionists to fight wars in the Middle
East in the interest of Greater Israel. And they tells us to keep
quiet or face slander, ostracism in our communities, loss of jobs or
worst… And it is the exemplary punishment of the many small voices,
which keeps the number of vocal critics low…until recently. There is
rising anger and hostility in America against the ZPC, against its
arrogant authoritarian communal attacks on our democratic values.
Sooner or later there will be a major backlash – and it ill behooves
those who, through vocation or conviction, engaged in the firings,
censoring and intimidation campaigns against the American majority.
The American people will not remember their cries of `anti-Semitism'
they will recall their role in sending thousands of American soldiers
to their death in the Middle East in the interests of Israel.

Let us hope that those who seek justice will not use the same
authoritarian laws like the Patriot Act, nor the harsh interrogation
techniques of degradation (torture) and anti-Arab/Muslim practices
promoted by the Zionists in the Pentagon, Congress, Justice Department
and Homeland Security. Those who oppose Zionism need to abide solidly
by higher moral standards.

James Petras' latest books: The Power of Israel in the United States
(2006) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and
Militarists (2007).

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