Turning the Tables on the Israel Firsters

July 16, 2008
Turning the Tables
on the Israel-Firsters

http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139

by Michael Scheuer

Now that the dust has settled in the spat between journalist Joe Klein
and the ideologues at Commentary, it is time to regret the ink spilled
over the non-issue of "dual loyalties." The idea that there are U.S.
citizens who have equal loyalties to the United States and Israel is
passé. American Israel-firsters have long since dropped any pretense
of loyalty to the United States and its genuine national interests.
They have moved brazenly into the Israel first, last, and always camp.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev.
Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the
Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol, the
Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about
the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide
immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service
personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-
Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard,
and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth
column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples'
religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which
the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake.

The Israel-firsters' success is, of course, the stuff of which legends
are made. Most recently, for example, we heard President Bush echo
Sen. Lieberman's insane and subversive contention that the United
States has a "duty" to ensure the fulfilling of God's millennia-old
promise to Abraham regarding the creation and survival of Israel. Bush
told the Knesset all Americans are ready to endlessly bleed and pay to
ensure Israel's security. And where does the president derive
authority to make such a commitment in the name of his countrymen?
From the Constitution? On the basis of America's dominant religion?
From – heaven forbid – a thoughtful, hardheaded analysis of U.S.
interests?

No, Bush's pledge was based on none of these. Bush's decision to more
deeply involve America in the eternal Arab-Israeli war was based on
nothing less than the corruption wrought on the American political
system by the Israel-firsters, AIPAC's enormous treasury, and the
lamentable but growing influence of America's leading evangelical
Protestant preachers.

The Israel-firsters started the Iraq war and now have the United
States locked into an occupation of that country that may not end in
any of our lifetimes. Unless Americans ignore the likes of Hanson,
Podhoretz, Lieberman, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz, the cost in blood and
treasure will ultimately bankrupt America.

AIPAC is a perfectly legal organization, and the wealth of its members
is channeled into reliable campaign contributions for any candidate
from either party who will put Israel's interests above America's.
From McCain to Obama, from Pelosi to Giuliani, from Hillary Clinton to
Vice President Cheney, AIPAC pumps money to any and every American
politician who is willing to adopt an Israel-first policy.

Leading American Protestant evangelical preachers – men like Hagee,
Parsley, and Graham – are the newest and perhaps most anti-American
members of this fifth column. They serve two purposes: (1) to
reinforce in the minds of their flocks the Bush-Lieberman absurdity
that the United States has a "duty" to ensure Israel's survival; and
(2) to use religious rhetoric to steadily convince the Muslim world
that U.S. leaders are interested only in taming – and if need be,
destroying – Islam.

The reality and power of this anti-American, pro-Israel triangle –
Israel-first politicians, civil servants, and pundits; AIPAC's
corrupting influence; and the warmongering of major evangelical
Protestant preachers – is so obvious and palpable that the only way
its members can blur reality is to deny the triangle's existence and
identify their critics as anti-Semites. Well, the time has come to
simply ignore these folks' knee-jerk hurling of that epithet. Indeed,
the slur ought to understood for what it is: a sure sign that the
Israel-firsters know that their fifth column would be destroyed in a
minute if their fellow Americans come to recognize that their sons and
daughters are dying in Iraq and soon elsewhere to protect an Israeli
state whose existence is just as important to U.S. interests as the
creation of a Palestinian state – that is, of no importance
whatsoever.

American voters must start using the democratic process to begin
removing themselves from the religious war known as the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Disengagement will take time, hard work, and a steadfast
commitment to the rule of law. Three actions are well within the
voters' capability, and their use would bring pressure on federal
officials to stop killing America's children in wars between Arabs and
Israelis.

Voters should press federal representatives to end taxpayer funding
for the National Endowment for Democracy and other such organizations.
These organizations' main function is to promote the fallacy that U.S.
interests are served by making sure that Israel – "the embattled
island of democracy in the Middle East" – is protected, and that the
lives of American children should be joyfully spent to bring democracy
to foreigners in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Voters should not vote for any candidate for federal office who
accepts contributions from AIPAC or any other Israel-first
organization. This decision would be an important step in beginning to
sweep clean the Augean stable that is American politics.
Voters of all faiths must press their religious leaders to regularly,
publicly, and specifically denounce the evangelical Protestant
preachers whose fire-and-brimstone support for Israel involves
Americans in religious wars in which U.S. interests are not
threatened.
Neutralizing the Israel-first fifth column must be done, but it must
be accomplished using legitimate democratic tools: voting, lobbying,
free speech, and support for candidates pledged to keep America out of
other peoples' religious wars. The invocation of the anti-Semite
epithet by the Israel-firsters should be ignored. To be silenced by
the slurs of the Israel-firsters is to ignominiously invite the end of
American independence by subordinating U.S. interests to those of a
foreign nation, as well as to forget the warning of the greatest
American. "If men are precluded from offering their sentiments on a
matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences
that can invite the consideration of mankind," George Washington said
in March 1783, "reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may
be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the
slaughter." As long as the Israel-firsters can define the limits of
acceptable public discourse, Americans are on their way to the
slaughter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAehMPVFFE0

Michael Scheuer (former head of CIA Bin Laden unit) was on Bill Maher.
He said:

" Israel is not worth an American life or an American dollar." and

"Our unqualified support of Israel has brought the US a great deal of
pain and increasingly dead Americans, fighting wars that are not ours
to fight." and

" America is fighting a war that does not exist -- our politicians
have lied to us-it is not about hating freedom, womens' rights etc.---
it is about our policies in the Middle East ."

---------------------------------------------------------






Israel’s War with Iran and the Zionist Power Configuration in America



http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=92732



-------------------------------------------------------



http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM



http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM



http://NOMOREWARFORISRAEL.BLOGSPOT.COM

Iraq: A War For Israel?

http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml







NOMOREWARFORISRAEL wrote:

July 16, 2008
Turning the Tables
on the Israel-Firsters

http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=13139

by Michael Scheuer

Now that the dust has settled in the spat between journalist Joe Klein
and the ideologues at Commentary, it is time to regret the ink spilled
over the non-issue of "dual loyalties." The idea that there are U.S.
citizens who have equal loyalties to the United States and Israel is
passé. American Israel-firsters have long since dropped any pretense
of loyalty to the United States and its genuine national interests.
They have moved brazenly into the Israel first, last, and always camp.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Norman Podhoretz, Victor Davis Hanson, the Rev.
Franklin Graham, Alan Dershowitz, Rudy Giuliani, Douglas Feith, the
Rev. Rod Parsley, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, Bill Kristol, the
Rev. John Hagee, and the thousands of wealthy supporters of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) appear to care about
the United States only so far as Washington is willing to provide
immense, unending funding and the lives of young U.S. service
personnel to protect Israel. These individuals and their all-for-
Israel journals – Commentary, National Review, the Weekly Standard,
and the Wall Street Journal – amount to nothing less than a fifth
column intent on involving 300 million Americans in other peoples'
religious wars, making them pay and bleed to protect a nation in which
the United States has no genuine national security interest at stake.

The Israel-firsters' success is, of course, the stuff of which legends
are made. Most recently, for example, we heard President Bush echo
Sen. Lieberman's insane and subversive contention that the United
States has a "duty" to ensure the fulfilling of God's millennia-old
promise to Abraham regarding the creation and survival of Israel. Bush
told the Knesset all Americans are ready to endlessly bleed and pay to
ensure Israel's security. And where does the president derive
authority to make such a commitment in the name of his countrymen?
From the Constitution? On the basis of America's dominant religion?
From – heaven forbid – a thoughtful, hardheaded analysis of U.S.
interests?

No, Bush's pledge was based on none of these. Bush's decision to more
deeply involve America in the eternal Arab-Israeli war was based on
nothing less than the corruption wrought on the American political
system by the Israel-firsters, AIPAC's enormous treasury, and the
lamentable but growing influence of America's leading evangelical
Protestant preachers.

The Israel-firsters started the Iraq war and now have the United
States locked into an occupation of that country that may not end in
any of our lifetimes. Unless Americans ignore the likes of Hanson,
Podhoretz, Lieberman, Woolsey, and Wolfowitz, the cost in blood and
treasure will ultimately bankrupt America.

AIPAC is a perfectly legal organization, and the wealth of its members
is channeled into reliable campaign contributions for any candidate
from either party who will put Israel's interests above America's.
From McCain to Obama, from Pelosi to Giuliani, from Hillary Clinton to
Vice President Cheney, AIPAC pumps money to any and every American
politician who is willing to adopt an Israel-first policy.

Leading American Protestant evangelical preachers – men like Hagee,
Parsley, and Graham – are the newest and perhaps most anti-American
members of this fifth column. They serve two purposes: (1) to
reinforce in the minds of their flocks the Bush-Lieberman absurdity
that the United States has a "duty" to ensure Israel's survival; and
(2) to use religious rhetoric to steadily convince the Muslim world
that U.S. leaders are interested only in taming – and if need be,
destroying – Islam.

The reality and power of this anti-American, pro-Israel triangle –
Israel-first politicians, civil servants, and pundits; AIPAC's
corrupting influence; and the warmongering of major evangelical
Protestant preachers – is so obvious and palpable that the only way
its members can blur reality is to deny the triangle's existence and
identify their critics as anti-Semites. Well, the time has come to
simply ignore these folks' knee-jerk hurling of that epithet. Indeed,
the slur ought to understood for what it is: a sure sign that the
Israel-firsters know that their fifth column would be destroyed in a
minute if their fellow Americans come to recognize that their sons and
daughters are dying in Iraq and soon elsewhere to protect an Israeli
state whose existence is just as important to U.S. interests as the
creation of a Palestinian state – that is, of no importance
whatsoever.

American voters must start using the democratic process to begin
removing themselves from the religious war known as the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Disengagement will take time, hard work, and a steadfast
commitment to the rule of law. Three actions are well within the
voters' capability, and their use would bring pressure on federal
officials to stop killing America's children in wars between Arabs and
Israelis.

Voters should press federal representatives to end taxpayer funding
for the National Endowment for Democracy and other such organizations.
These organizations' main function is to promote the fallacy that U.S.
interests are served by making sure that Israel – "the embattled
island of democracy in the Middle East" – is protected, and that the
lives of American children should be joyfully spent to bring democracy
to foreigners in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Voters should not vote for any candidate for federal office who
accepts contributions from AIPAC or any other Israel-first
organization. This decision would be an important step in beginning to
sweep clean the Augean stable that is American politics.
Voters of all faiths must press their religious leaders to regularly,
publicly, and specifically denounce the evangelical Protestant
preachers whose fire-and-brimstone support for Israel involves
Americans in religious wars in which U.S. interests are not
threatened.
Neutralizing the Israel-first fifth column must be done, but it must
be accomplished using legitimate democratic tools: voting, lobbying,
free speech, and support for candidates pledged to keep America out of
other peoples' religious wars. The invocation of the anti-Semite
epithet by the Israel-firsters should be ignored. To be silenced by
the slurs of the Israel-firsters is to ignominiously invite the end of
American independence by subordinating U.S. interests to those of a
foreign nation, as well as to forget the warning of the greatest
American. "If men are precluded from offering their sentiments on a
matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences
that can invite the consideration of mankind," George Washington said
in March 1783, "reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may
be taken away, and, dumb and silent, we may be led, like sheep, to the
slaughter." As long as the Israel-firsters can define the limits of
acceptable public discourse, Americans are on their way to the
slaughter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAehMPVFFE0

Michael Scheuer (former head of CIA Bin Laden unit) was on Bill Maher.
He said:

" Israel is not worth an American life or an American dollar." and

"Our unqualified support of Israel has brought the US a great deal of
pain and increasingly dead Americans, fighting wars that are not ours
to fight." and

" America is fighting a war that does not exist -- our politicians
have lied to us-it is not about hating freedom, womens' rights etc.---
it is about our policies in the Middle East ."

---------------------------------------------------------

Israel’s War with Iran and the Zionist Power Configuration in America

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=92732

-------------------------------------------------------

http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM

http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM

http://NOMOREWARFORISRAEL.BLOGSPOT.COM