I
recently was asked to speak at an online conference entitled Deep Truth: Encountering Deep
State Lies. My panel addressed Understanding Zionism:
Deconstructing the Power Paradigm and my own topic
was How Jewish Power Sustains the Israel Narrative.
Working on my presentation, I was forced to confront the evolution of my own
views on both the corruption of government in the United States and the ability
of powerful domestic lobbies to deliberately distort the perception of national
interests to benefit foreign countries even when that activity does terrible
damage to the U.S.
My personal journey began half a century ago. I became part of the
U.S. national security state after being drafted for the Vietnam War when I
graduated from college in 1968. I was at the time, vaguely pro-war, having
bought into the media argument that international communism was mounting a
major threat in southeast Asia. I also found the anti-war student movement
distasteful because I was acquainted with many of its spokesmen and knew that
they were chiefly motivated by a desire to avoid the draft, not due to any
perception that the war itself was wrong or misguided. I knew a lot about the
Punic Wars but precious little about former French Indochina and I suspect that
those chanting “Ho-ho-Ho Chi Minh” might have known even less that I did.
Because I spoke some Russian, I wound up in an army intelligence
collection unit in West Berlin for three years where I and my fifty or so
comrades did absolutely nothing but drink and party. It was my introduction to
how government really works when it was not working at all and it did provide
me with GI Bill money to go to grad school. After my PhD came a relatively easy
transition to CIA given the fact that my degree was so obscure that no one but
the government would hire me.
The journey from an army unit that was asleep at the wheel to the
CIA, which was in full downsizing crisis mode post-Vietnam, was educational.
Whereas the army was too bloated and complacent even to fake it, the Agency was
fully capable of creating crises and then acting like the defender of American
interests as it worked to resolve the various situations that it had invented.
The war against Eurocommunism, which I was engaged in, was hyped and billed as
the next great threat against the American way of life after the Vietnam
blunder, swallowing up resources pointlessly as neither France, nor Spain nor
Italy ever came close to entering the Red orbit.
As I climbed up the CIA ladder I also noticed something else.
There was the equivalent of a worldwide conspiracy to promote threats to keep
big national security-based government well-funded and in place. When I was in
Turkey I began to note considerable intelligence liaison reporting coming from
the Israelis and others promoting their own agendas. The material was
frequently fictional in nature, but the danger was that it was being mixed in
with more credible reporting which gave it traction. U.S. government consumers
of the reporting would inevitably absorb the dubious viewpoint being promoted
that Arabs and Iranians were fundamentally untrustworthy and were in bed with
the Soviets.
There was considerable negative reporting on Saddam Hussein also
coming out of Israel and motivated by his support of the Palestinians. Some of
this ultimately surfaced in the Pentagon’s Paul Wolfowitz-Doug Feith
assessments of “intelligence that had been missed” which eventually became
pretexts for the catastrophic Iraq War. I later learned that both Feith and Wolfowitz
had a virtually revolving door of Israeli intelligence officials and diplomats
running through their Pentagon offices in the lead-up to that war.
It did not take much to connect the dots and realize that Israel,
far from being a friend and ally, was the principal catalyst for the many
missteps that the United States has made in the Middle East. U.S. policy in the
region was being deliberately shaped around Israeli concerns by American Jews
ensconced in the Pentagon and White House who certainly knew exactly what they
were doing. No one should blame the Israelis for acting in their own
self-interest, but every loyal American should blame the Libbys, Feiths and
Wolfowitzes for their willingness to place Israeli interests ahead of those of
their own country.
After my departure from government in part over my disagreement
with the Iraq War, this willingness to place the United States in peril to
serve the interests of a foreign country began to bother me, and there is no
country that manipulates the U.S. government better or more persistently than
Israel. I gradually became involved with those who were pushing back against
the Israel Lobby, though it was not generally referred to in those terms before
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer produced their seminal work The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy in 2006.
It does not take a genius to figure out that the United States is
deeply involved in a series of seemingly endless wars pitting it against
predominantly Muslim nations even though Washington has no vital interests at
stake in places like Syria, Libya and Iraq. Who is driving the process and
benefiting? Israel is clearly the intended beneficiary of a coordinated effort
mounted by more than 600 Jewish organizations in the U.S. that have at least as
part of their programs the promotion and protection of Israel. Ironically,
organizations that promote the interests of a foreign government are supposed
to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) but
not a single pro-Israel organization has ever done so nor even been seriously
challenged on the issue, a tribute to their power in dealing with the federal
government.
Those who are in the drivers’ seat of the Israel promotion process
are what some would describe as the Israel Lobby but which I would prefer to
call a subset of the Jewish Lobby, which in itself is supported by something I
would designate Jewish Power, an aggregate of Jewish money, control over key
aspects of the media and entertainment industries plus easy access to corrupted
politicians desirous of positive press and campaign donations. This penetration
and control of the public discourse has resulted in the creation of what I
would refer to as the official “Israel narrative,” in which Israel, which
claims perpetual victimhood, is reflexively referred to as “the only democracy
in the Middle East” and “Washington’s closest ally and friend,” assertions that
are completely false but which have been aggressively and successfully promoted
to shape how Americans view the Israeli-Arab conflict. Palestinians resisting
the Israeli occupation are invariably described as “terrorists” both in the
U.S. and Israel.
Jewish Power is a funny thing. If you read the Jewish media or the
Israeli press, to include Forward, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post,
you will find frequent references to it, nearly always seen as completely
laudable. Bottom feeder Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard recently
boasted that “Jews should not apologize for being so rich,
controlling the media or influencing public debate…they have earned it…never
apologize for using your strength…”
For many Jews like Dershowitz, Jewish power is something to be
proud of, but they also believe that it should never be noticed or examined by
non-Jews. Gentile criticism of Jewish collective behavior is something that
must continue to be forbidden, just as the expression “Israeli Lobby” was
largely taboo before Walt and Mearsheimer. Israeli partisans regularly engage
in the defamation of individuals, including myself, who do not conform to the
taboos as anti-Semites or holocaust deniers, labels deliberately used as
weapons to end discussion and silence critics whenever necessary.
So why do I think that we have to start talking about Jewish Power
as opposed to the euphemism Israel Lobby? It is because the wars in the Middle
East, which have done so much to damage the United States and were at least in
part arranged to benefit Israel, have been largely driven by wealthy and
powerful Jews. If America goes to war with Iran, as is increasingly likely, it
will be all about Israel and it will be arranged by the political and financial
services Washington-Wall Street axis, make no mistake.
To my mind, Israel is America’s number one foreign policy problem
in that it is able and willing to start potentially catastrophic wars with
countries that it has demonized but that do not threaten the U.S. And those
doing the manipulating are bipartisan Jewish oligarchs with deep pockets that
support the multitude of pro-Israel organizations, think tanks and media
outlets that have done so much to corrupt America’s political process.
Hollywood producer Haim Saban, a principal Democratic Party supporter, has said
that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. Principal GOP funder
casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who served in the U.S.
Army in World War 2, has said that he regrets that service and would have
preferred to be in the Israel Defense Forces. They as well as others, including
fund manager Paul Singer and Home Depot’s Bernard Marcus, are Jews laboring on
behalf of the self-proclaimed Jewish State while the neoconservatives, fiercely
protective of Israel, are also nearly all Jewish. Asserting that the fact that
they are Jews acting for a Jewish state should be irrelevant as they are also
doing what is good for America, as is commonly done by their apologists, is
logically inconsistent and borders on absurdity. As for the frequently cited
Bible belt Christian-Zionists who support Israel, they are, to be sure,
numerous, but they do not have the access to real power in the United States
that Jews have.
Jewish Power is also what has in part driven the United States
into a moral cesspit. Israeli snipers shoot dead scores of unarmed Gazan
demonstrators and hardly anyone in Washington has anything to say about it.
America’s Ambassador to Israel, an Orthodox Jewish lawyer named David Friedman
who has multiple ties to Israel’s illegal settlements, uses his position to
defend Israel, ignoring U.S. interests. Last week he held a press conference in
which he told reporters to “shut their mouths”
in their criticism of Israel’s slaughter of Gazans.
When a young Palestinian nurse is deliberately targeted and killed
while treating a wounded man, it hardly appears in the U.S. media.
Arab teenagers are shot in the back while running away from Israeli gunmen
while a young woman is sentenced to prison for slapping an Israel soldier who
had just shot her cousin and was invading her home. Heavily armed Israeli
settlers run amok on the West Bank, beating and killing Arabs and destroying
their livelihoods. That is what Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu are all about and that is precisely the kind of a nation that America
should not want to become, but unfortunately the role of Washington as Israel’s
obedient poodle has our once great country moving in the wrong direction. This
has all been brought about by Jewish Power and it is time to wake up to that
fact and address it squarely.
