Peace and Justice Post

Foreign Policy In Focus

Stephen Zunes | December 20, 2007

It has been 21 months since John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt published their article “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” in The London Review of Books and four months since their publication of a book by the same name. Their main arguments are that unconditional U.S. support for the Israeli government has harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East and that American organizations allied with the Israeli government have been the primary influence regarding the orientation of U.S. Middle East policy. As a political scientist and international relations scholar specializing in the United States role in the Middle East, I certainly had no disagreements with their first contention. I took strong exception to their second, however.

There is no denying that the Israel Lobby can be quite influential, particularly on Capitol Hill and in its role in limiting the broader public debate. However, I found it incredibly naïve to assume that U.S. policy in the Middle East would be significantly different without AIPAC and like-minded pro-Zionist organizations. In response to what I saw as a rather simplistic and reductionist understanding of U.S. foreign policy by these prominent center-right international relations scholars, I wrote the article The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is It Really?

While most the criticisms of Mearsheimer and Walt’s article came from right-wing apologists of the Israeli government, many long-time critics of U.S. support for Israeli occupation, repression, colonization and related policies against their neighbors raised concerns as well. My article became one of the more widely-circulated and detailed critiques from the left.

My analysis drew profoundly negative reaction from those who insisted that it was not oil interests, military contractors, ideological imperialists, and related powerful sectors of America’s ruling class who were responsible for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and other tragic manifestations of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, but was instead the responsibility of a rich cabal of Jews who manipulated the Bush administration to engage in policies it would not have otherwise supported. I was denounced for propagating left-wing “lies” and “myths” by examining some of the broader structural, ideological, economic and institutional inherencies in U.S. foreign policy instead of acknowledging that it was all the fault of the Jews.

Just as the hysterical reaction from right-wing Zionist circles seemed to some to vindicate Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments that an all-powerful Israel Lobby stifles legitimate debate about U.S. policy toward Israel and the broader Middle East, the reaction to my critique seemed to some to vindicate the notion that those who put the blame on the Israel Lobby are prone to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s book certainly does not fall into the anti-Semitic rants of many of their supporters. Like their original article, however, the book is still fundamentally flawed.

Continued . . .

The Huffington Post

Peter Dreier | Posted December 21, 2007

Just a week before Christmas, President Bush gave corporate America two big presents. On Tuesday, his Federal Communications Commission changed the rules to allow the nation’s giant conglomerates to further consolidate their grip on the media by permitting them to purchase TV and radio stations in the same local markets where they already own daily newspapers. As a gift to the country’s automobile industry, Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency ruled Wednesday, over the objections of the agency’s staff, that California, the nation’s largest and most polluted state, and 16 other states, can’t impose regulations to limit greenhouse gases from cars and trucks that are stronger than the federal government’s own weak standards.

So far, no major politicians or editorial writers have labeled these actions “class warfare,” although this is precisely what Bush is engaged in — helping the already rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. Class warfare is, in fact, the very essence of Bush’s tenure in the White House. In thousands of ways, big and small, Bush has promoted the interests of the very rich and the largest corporations. Corporate lobbyists have the run of the White House. Their agenda – tax cuts for the rich and big business, attacks on labor unions, and the weakening of laws protecting consumers, workers and the environment from corporate abuse – is Bush’s agenda.

Keep reading . . .

The Electronic Intifada, 19 December 2007

Hannah Mermelstein,

Israeli border police run to to stop a demonstration of Palestinians upset by the controversial and ongoing Israeli excavations near the al-Aqsa mosque. (Anne Paq/MaanImages)

I am feeling optimistic about Palestine.

I know it sounds crazy. How can I use “optimistic” and “Palestine” in the same sentence when conditions on the ground only seem to get worse? Israeli settlements continue to expand on a daily basis, the checkpoints and segregated road system are becoming more and more institutionalized, more than 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners are being held in Israeli jails, Gaza is under heavy attack and the borders are entirely controlled by Israel, preventing people from getting their most basic human needs met.

We can never forget these things and the daily suffering of the people, and yet I dare to say that I am optimistic. Why? Ehud Olmert. Let me clarify. Better yet, let’s let him clarify:

“The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights. As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.”

That’s right, the Prime Minister of Israel is currently trying to negotiate a “two-state solution” specifically because he realizes that if he doesn’t, Palestinians might begin to demand, en masse, equal rights to Israelis. Furthermore, he worries, the world might begin to see Israel as an apartheid state. In actuality, most of the world already sees Israel this way, but Olmert is worried that even Israel’s most ardent supporters will begin to catch up with the rest of the world.

“The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,” he told Haaretz, “because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.”

Perhaps Olmert is giving American Jews too much credit here, but he does expose a basic contradiction in the minds of most American people, Jewish and not: most of us — at least in theory — support equal rights for all residents of a country. Most of us do not support rights given on the basis of ethnicity and religion, especially when the ethnicity/religion being prioritized is one that excludes the vast majority of the country’s indigenous population. We cannot, of course, forget the history of ethnic cleansing of indigenous people on the American continent. But we must not use the existence of past atrocities to justify present ones.

I am optimistic not because I think the process of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Israel/Palestine is going to end tomorrow, but because I can feel the ideology behind these policies beginning to collapse. For years the true meaning of political Zionism has been as ignored as its effects on Palestinian daily life. And suddenly it is beginning to break open. Olmert’s comments last week are reminiscent of those of early Zionist leaders who talked openly of transfer and ethnic cleansing in order to create an artificial Jewish majority in historic Palestine.

Keep reading . . .

Counterpunch, Weekend Edition, December 22 / 23, 2007

By Andy Worthington

In the last week, while the media’s attention has focused on the release of two Sudanese humanitarian aid workers from Guantánamo, the 13 Afghans who were flown to Kabul at the same time have barely been mentioned. The reasons for this oversight are clear: firstly, because one of the Sudanese ex-detainees, Adel Hamad, a hospital administrator, had become something of a celebrity after his enterprising lawyers posted a video about his case on YouTube, which prompted a group of campaigners to establish a website devoted to his plight; and secondly, because Hamad and his compatriot, Salim Adem, were released on their return, and various reporters were able to meet them.

No such luxuries were reserved for the Afghans. Few of their stories are known at all, and on their return to Afghanistan they were promptly imprisoned in a wing of Pol-i-Charki, Kabul’s main prison, which was recently refurbished by the US authorities. The oversight is disturbing because, for the most part, the stories of the Afghans demonstrate colossal ineptitude on the part of the US military and Special Forces in Afghanistan, at least equivalent to the failures of intelligence that led to the capture of Adel Hamad and Salim Adem. In addition, the imprisonment of these men in a prison wing refurbished by the US authorities raises uncomfortable questions about the role of the US military in Afghanistan, over six years after the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

Keep reading . . .

RINF.com, December 22, 2007he CIA has purposely impeded the Sep. 11 Commission’s inquiry by withholding interrogation videos, say the two chairmen of the panel.

The CIA ‘clearly obstructed’ the Commission’s investigation, said Lee H. Hamilton.

“I don’t know whether that’s illegal or not, but it’s certainly wrong,” said Thomas H. Kean, other Chairman of the Commission.

A CIA spokesman has claimed that the commission staff members never specifically asked for the videos.

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelicow, the panel’s former executive director, recounts a meeting on December 2003 between Hamilton and George Tenet, then the director of the agency.

In the meeting, Hamilton told Tenet that the CIA should provide all relevant documents even if the Commission had not specifically asked for them.

According to the memorandum, Tenet in response to Hamilton made no mention of the videotapes of interrogations.

The memorandum reiterates that federal law penalizes anyone who knowingly and willfully withholds or covers up a material fact from a federal inquiry or makes any false statement to investigators.

MHE/RE

The Sunday Times,  December 23, 2007
Andrew Sullivan

Almost all of the time, the Washington I know and live in is utterly unrelated to the Washington you see in the movies. The government is far more incompetent and amateur than the masterminds of Hollywood darkness.

There are no rogue CIA agents engaging in illegal black ops and destroying evidence to protect their political bosses. The kinds of scenario cooked up in Matt Damon’s riveting Bourne series are fantasy compared with the mundane, bureaucratic torpor of the Brussels on the Potomac.

And then you read about the case of Abu Zubaydah. He is a seriously bad guy – someone we should all be glad is in custody. A man deeply involved in Al-Qaeda, he was captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002 and whisked off to a secret interrogation, allegedly in Thailand.

President George Bush claimed Zubaydah was critical in identifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind behind 9/11. The president also conceded that at some point the CIA, believing Zubaydah was withholding information, “used an alternative set of procedures”, which were “safe and lawful and necessary”.

Keep reading . . .

Yahoo News, December 22, 2007

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer

ROME – The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 may have begun was built near a pagan shrine as part of an effort to spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.

Italian archaeologists last month unveiled an underground grotto that they believe ancient Romans revered as the place where a wolf nursed Rome‘s legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

A few feet from the grotto, or “Lupercale,” the Emperor Constantine built the Basilica of St. Anastasia, where some believe Christmas was first celebrated on Dec. 25.

Constantine ended the frequent waves of anti-Christian persecutions in the Roman empire by making Christianity a lawful religion in 313. He played a key role in unifying the beliefs and practices of the early followers of Jesus.

In 325, he convened the Council of Nicaea, which fixed the dates of important Christian festivals. It opted to mark Christmas, then celebrated at varying dates, on Dec. 25 to coincide with the Roman festival celebrating the birth of the sun god, Andrea Carandini, a professor of archaeology at Rome’s La Sapienza University, told reporters Friday.

The Basilica of St. Anastasia was built as soon as a year after the Nicaean Council. It probably was where Christmas was first marked on Dec. 25, part of broader efforts to link pagan practices to Christian celebrations in the early days of the new religion, Carandini said.

“The church was built to Christianize these pagan places of worship,” he said. “It was normal to put a church near these places to try to ‘save’ them.”

Rome’s archaeological superintendent Angelo Bottini, who did not take part in Carandini’s research, said that hypothesis was “evocative and coherent” and “helps us understand the mechanisms of the passage from paganism to Christianity.”

Bottini and Carandini both said future digs could bolster the link between the shrine and the church if structures belonging to the “Lupercale” are found directly below the basilica.

The Basilica St. Anastasia was the first church to rise not on the ancient city’s outskirts, but on the Palatine Hill, the palatial center of power and religion in imperial Rome, Carandini said. Though little known today, at the time of Constantine it was one of the most important basilicas for Christians in Rome, he said.

The “Lupercale” shrine — named after the “lupa,” Latin for she-wolf — is 52 feet below ground. So far, archaeologists have only been able to see it by inserting probes and cameras that have revealed a vaulted ceiling decorated with colored marble and a white imperial eagle.

Though some experts have expressed doubts that the grotto is in fact the mythological nursery of Romulus and Remus, most archaeologists believe the shrine fits the descriptions found in ancient texts, and plans are being drawn up to excavate the structure further.

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Anthropology & Archaeology

Sat Dec 22, 11:13 AM ET

A view of St. Anastasia Basilica, in Rome, Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007. A recently discovered pagan shrine dedicated to Rome’s founder Romulus and his brother Remus is being linked by some experts to the first celebration of Christmas held on the date that still marks the festivity today. Last month Italian archaeologists unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been worshipped by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the legendary twins. Now, a top Italian scholar believes that a church, the Church of St. Anastasia, built on the site of the shrine, believed to be a few steps away from the church, witnessed the birth of Christmas as we know it, making it a symbolic place in efforts to link pagan practices and Christian celebrations.

(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Online Journal, December 21, 2007

It is obvious who will speak for Israel at the “peace negotiations.” Israel’s elected officials, despite some well-managed contrary rhetoric, will speak for Israel, and probably offer no significant concessions.

Israel’s Vice Premier Haim Ramon has already clarified the future of the negotiations by a statement that circulated in an Associated Press report, Dec, 9, 2007: “Israel intends to hold on to all Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, a position that undercuts the Palestinians’ claim to the eastern part of the city for their future capital.”

Who can speak for Palestine? The West Bank Palestinians are economically and politically separated from their relatives in Gaza, and both operate separately from the Palestinian community in the Diaspora. Hamas is divided. Fatah is divided. The Palestinians have no cohesion to create a unified voice, no power to present a coherent voice, no means to manage a compromising voice. It seems that the Palestinians have no voice, but the appearance is deceiving; the Palestinians have potent voices of international law and international reason. A major problem is they lack active support from an international community that has been negligent in providing the necessary means to implement United Nations (UN) resolutions and mandating accepted international laws.

Continued . . .

Indymedia, UK, December 21, 2007.

Margaret Kimberley | December 21, 2007

“She has become well paid and famous because she demonizes her fellow Muslims.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali first came to fame in the Netherlands, after emigrating there from Somalia. She was elected to the Dutch parliament and became known for criticizing that nation’s Muslim immigrant communities, especially for their treatment of women and girls. The story of a young, pretty, African woman finding success and prestige in a foreign land was tailor made for Hollywood, or for right-wingers looking for the perfect person to excuse government sponsored mass murder.

The fairy tale story is just that. Ayaan Hirsi Ali exults in the lowest depths of self-hatred. She has become well paid and famous because she demonizes her fellow Muslims. As with black Americans or any other group of despised people, the self haters, the Uncle Toms, are given a clear path to fortune and favor.

Ali’s political party soured on their relations with her when it was revealed that she lied in order to enter the Netherlands with refugee status. It turned out that the famous politician was like millions of people from poor countries who will do anything to live in wealthy western nations.

When Ali left the Netherlands to live in the United States, her true ideology came to light. She became a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most powerful right-wing think tanks in the nation. Other AEI scholars include John Bolton, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingrich, Charles Murray, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and John Yoo.

Keep reading . . .

While some US experts doubt Israel’s ability to tackle Iran alone, David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, was quoted by Newsweek as saying that although information on the exact location of Iran’s nuclear facility is incomplete, Israel’s air strike on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility on September 6, widely discussed in foreign media outlets, could be seen as a test run for any future strike on Iran’s facilities, as well as a direct warning to Teheran.

Riedel told the magazine his impression that Israel would venture a strike on Iran on its own was formed before the publication of the joint US intelligence agencies’ report, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). “This [the NIE] makes it [a strike on Iran] even more likely,” he said.

Keep reading . . .