We know that AIPAC meddles in US policy, exerting huge influence on congress.
I have no doubt that any member of congress who attacks US policy of blindly supporting Israel will be targeted to be primaried.
Could it get any worse? Maybe it can. Maybe Israeli leaders are literally taking actions, talking war, operating a playbook with the intention of influencing the 2012 presidential elections.
Gene Lyons, writes in Salon, about how Israel's Bebe Netanyahu is looking to do some destabilization in relation to Iran.
To put it bluntly, it's not so much the regime in Tehran that Netanyahu is keen to destabilize as the one in Washington. The question now is how far he's willing to take it.
Lyons goes on to say, later in his article, after pointing out that the Ayatollahs have denied any intention of attacking Israel,
But when articles invoking the Holocaust and urging "creative destruction" in Iran appear on the same day (Feb. 7) in the Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , Newsweek and Bloomberg News , a skeptical observer might be forgiven for suspecting a well-coordinated propaganda campaign.
Writing in Beirut-based Al-Akhbar, American journalist Max Blumenthal dates its inception to a Jan. 3 article in Israel Hayom revealing that Israel's National Security Council -- basically Netanyahu's closest political allies -- had concluded that "U.S. President Barack Obama is "naive'" and fails to understand Israel's precarious position. Deemed a Likud Party organ, the newspaper is owned by multibillionaire Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who bankrolls Netanyahu and serves as Newt Gingrich's Sugar Daddy too.
Netanyahu appears to see an Obama second term as an impediment to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank -- or "Judea" and "Samaria," as Likudniks style it -- and has cast his lot with the Republican right. He's made public appearances with notables like Glenn Beck and "End Times" evangelist John Hagee. Adelson himself has pledged his vast resources to Obama's defeat.
This makes sense. Most of the Orthodox Jews in the US-- an estimated 80% or more-- tend to vote Republican, I'd speculate that it's based on the Israel single-issue.
Who knows how powerful wealthy Jewish influencers like Adelson are in ISRAEL, in terms of getting politicians elected? For all we know, Israeli politics could be even worse, in terms of being susceptible to being bought, than US politics. Is it unreasonable to speculate that centimllionaire and billionaire Jewish Republicans spend relatively small amounts in Israel to buy right wing power positions in the Knesset and higher, so they can use those positions-- like Bebe Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman-- to attack Obama and other vulnerable politicians in the US?
If any of this speculation is grounded in reality, as Lyons explores, then progressives need to take action, particularly Jewish progressives. They (we) need to do a lot more to stand up in opposition to the right wingers leading israel. Democrats need help articulating a conversation that enables them to support Israel while opposing the hawkish, politically motivated threats and machinations purportedly about Iran, but practically, aimed against US Democrats.
I want to be clear that I have been careful to talk about right wingers leading Israel and not Israel itself. The US is guilty of massive political interventions in other countries-- but it is the leaders who do this, not the American people.
Yes, there are many Israel-firster zionists-- Jewish and Christian-- who support Israel at the cost of the US losing good will and participating in committing travesties. But this is a challenging conversation to have, because people are so fast to blame Israel or the Jews. I'm not doing that here. It is a gift to the right wing hate mongers in Israel and the US to attack all Jews or the nation of Israel. The way to solve the problem of Israeli actions, policies and misdeeds is to change the leadership and the policies-- to take away power from the fundamentalist Orthodox Jewish minority that perpetrates them.
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