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01/01/2008: "GopBias.Org Blog February 7, 2008"
Note: At end of GOPBias.org blog
explosive The Commission by Philip Shenon
"A dean at Harvard University and a professor at the University of Chicago are coming under intense criticism for publishing an academic critique of the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington. THE PAPER CHARGES THAT THE UNITED STATES HAS WILLINGLY SET ASIDE ITS OWN SECURITY AND THAT OF MANY OF ITS ALLIES IN ORDER TO ADVANCE THE INTERESTS OF ISRAEL.
In addition the study accuses the pro-Israeli lobby, particularly AIPAC - the American Israel Public Affairs Committee - of manipulating the U.S. media, policing academia and silencing critics of Israel by labelling them as anti-Semitic. The study also examines the role played by pro-Israeli neo-conservatives in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The authors of the study, Stephen Walt, a dean at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago are now themselves being accused of anti-Semitism. In Washington, Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel of New York described the professors as 'dishonest so-called intellectuals' and 'anti-Semites.' Harvard professor, Ruth Wisse, called for the paper to be withdrawn. Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz described the study as trash that could have been written by Neo-Nazi David Duke. The New York Sun reported Harvard has received several calls from 'pro-Israel donors' expressing concern about the paper.
Harvard has already taken steps to distance itself from the report. Earlier this week it removed the logo of the Kennedy School of Government from the paper and added a new disclaimer to the study. The 81-page report was originally published on Harvard's website and an edited version appeared in the London Review of Books. The controversy comes less than a year after Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz attempted to block the publication of Norman Finkelstein's book 'Beyond Chutzpah: On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.'" - DemocracyNow 3/31/06
January 1, 2008
The Hidden Links? Roger Ailes, Joe Lieberman, Judith Miller, Mort Zuckerman, Abe Foxman ET CETERA!
All of the above are surely the most deceitful and mendacious pack of scoundrels this nation has had to endure since our Civil War [and here we have the individual whose leadership we have been denied, by the above and their co-conspirators in the Media/Press]. Details at the end of the following "Mideast Peace Conference" segment. And secondly it's amusing to hear NPR and its various programs attempt to blunt the rapier-like thrust to the heart of Bush/Cheney, their ingrained defeat exposed, reluctantly, by The New York Times' leading front page story 12/4/07 as stated by Steven Lee Myers: "Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate." The headline "U.S. Finding says Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Effort In 2003" directly contradicts the various Bush statements over the years claiming the threat posed by Iran - Iran an "Axis of Evil", and threatening "World War III". Near the very end of an accompanying story by Mark Mazzetti (paragraph #24 of a 26 paragraph story) we read the understatement of the decade: "Israel intelligence officials for years have put forward more urgent warnings about Iran's nuclear abilities than their American counterparts, positing that Iran could get a nuclear bomb this decade."
True to form, within three days of "President" Bush's 11/28/07 expansive statement to the White House Press Corps in the Rose Garden, no less, "America will do everything in its power" to secure a just Israeli-Palestinian peace, Bush, out of the public eye, reverses course. Amy Goodman's DemocracyNow.org keeps us informed 12/3/07.
"Meanwhile at the UN, the Bush administration has pulled a diplomatic about-face on a resolution endorsing last week's Israeli-Palestinian agreement in Annapolis. On Friday, the U.S. withdrew the measure just one day after introducing it to the Security Council. Israeli officials say they had privately objected to the White House over concerns it could have granted the United Nations a role in future negotiations. The Annapolis agreement effectively removed the involvement of the UN, European Union and Russia. It foresees the U.S. as the 'sole judge' and arbiter of implementing the road map."
"In 1948 the Jewish army expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians from what then became the State of Israel. Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, said he still felt haunted by the story, and then, in 1998, the Israelis opened the military archives, and it became clear that the Zionist's movement had planned to expel the Palestinians long before 1948. In 2006 Ilan Pappe published his most recent book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He spoke about his work at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands in January/February of 2007." - Maria Gilardin June 2007
Ilan Pappe: "(a synopsis) David Ben Gurion, who led an ideological movement ever since the 19th century, wanted to turn Palestine into a Jewish state with as few Palestinians in it as possible (when he was out of office this first Prime Minister of Israel was annoyed by the presence of so many Palestinians remaining in Israel, particularly in the Galilee). It shows that the leader of the Zionist movement, the 1st Prime Minister of Israel, someone at the heart of the Zionist movement, so annoyed by so many Palestinians in the Galilee, he is committed to a vision that sees historic Palestine as empty of Palestinians. Most of the Israeli Jews in the 1950's thought the same way, and nothing has changed in Israel in 2006. How to get there, how to de-Arabize Palestine. How to make Palestine a Jewish state, (i.e.) get rid of the people who live there (except, of course, for that number of Jewish settlers who in the 1930s had grown to one-third of the population in Palestine as they left the turmoil in Europe). How to deal with the majority in Palestine, the Palestinians. In February of 1947 the Zionists were very focused under Ben Gurion and the advisory committee he organized around him (only hardliners) and it took them a year, to February of 1948 to develop the plan to rid Palestine of the Palestinians, that as many as possible of the one million Palestinians should be expelled. How to do it? The experiment? The Jewish/Zionist army expelled about eight to nine villages. They wanted to see how the world would react. Nothing. So, you come with buses, lorrys - you go into someone's house, there are children, women, men, people have lived in these houses for hundreds of years: 'You have twenty minutes' to get on the bus and out you go. And half an hour after you leave on the bus someone detonates the house and blows it up. So Ben Gurion and others were not sure how the world and the young soldiers would react. Nothing. So, the master plan. They divided Palestine into twelve areas, the Haganah had twelve brigades, each brigade was given a list of villages, neighborhoods in mixed towns and systematically, in seven months, they expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians, 531 villages were destroyed, eleven towns were demolished."
[Editor's note: This year 2008 will be a trying one, not only because of our quadrennial elections which includes our presidency. The year is also the 60th anniversary of the problematic founding of the Jewish State of Israel and, not surprisingly, the year will begin January 9th with a major series on the Public Broadcasting System, PBS, and a "companion landmark book (which) chronicles three hundred years of Jewish American history".]
An additional Jewish American factor is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the lobby extraordinaire, the subject of an obscure Philip Shenon piece, on a formerly untouchable subject, in the 11/3/07 NY Times (A-14) which relates the efforts of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman (US vs Steven Rosen & Keith Weissman case #1:05CR225 Federal District Court Alexandria, Va.) to call Condoleezza Rice and others, including Paul Wolfowitz, to substantiate Rosen/Weissman claims that their secret contacts with the State of Israel, relating classified information, were the norm this last ten years. Fortunately for the American public the National Archives has finally released documents from the Nixon Library, papers which should have been made public in 1994, records which document that Israeli deception of the United States has been long-standing and persistent. On July 19th of 1969 Richard Nixon's national security adviser Henry Kissinger informed the president that "fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was 'illegally' obtained from the United States about 1965" and "This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us and may even have stolen from us." Flaunting its sub rosa relationship with the United States, to this day Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
We can begin by revisiting James Bamford's A Pretext for War, pp. 270-350, which details the elaborate Israeli-Jewish American hoax (Saddam with nuclear WMDs) used to justify the invasion and generate public support. From Michiko Kakutani's 6/18/04 review:
"What he does focus on is the role that Israel has played in shaping American policy. Mr. Bamford contends that 'the blueprint for the new Bush policy' on the Middle East 'had actually been drawn up five years earlier by three of his top national security advisors' (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser) for the Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu (who rejected the plan), and that when they entered office in January 2001, all these hawks needed was 'a pretext' for war against Iraq. Citing a report from the British newspaper The Guardian, Mr. Bamford adds that the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon unit set up by Mr. Feith, 'forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence unit within Ariel Sharon's office in Israel,' which 'was designed to go around the country's own intelligence organization, Mossad.'"
RAY McGOVERN (27-year CIA analyst on 6/6/05 Lehrer NewsHour): "I would go back to an earlier conversation, and this happened on the 20th of September 2001, and this happened nine days after 9/11. This involved Tony Blair, who was in Washington having dinner with the President. How do we know about this? We know this because Christopher Meyer, the UK ambassador was there at that dinner. What does he say? The conversation went like this. President Bush: 'Uh, Tony. Uh, we're going into Afghanistan in a week or two, but that won't take long and we get out of there and we're going right into Iraq. Are you with me, Tony? Are you with me?' And Christopher Meyer says 'My goodness, it was really, and Tony was really sort of nonplussed, but he said 'Yes sir, I'm with you Mr. President.' (Margaret Warner tries to interrupt, but Mr. McGovern continues) So that goes back (a flustered Ms. Margaret Warner) "Mr. McGovern, speed up!" (Mr. McGovern) "so that goes back to 2001" (Ms. Warner) "We're almost out of time. Get to the next part!" (Mr. McGovern) "Okay, that's it." (Ms. Warner, almost shouting) "So, it's not about Iraq, it's about Afghanistan!" (Mr. McGovern) "Well, no. This has to do with Iraq. What the President said to Tony Blair, on the 20th of September (2001) according to the UK ambassador who was there, is 'We're going into Afghanistan in a couple of weeks. It won't take us long there, and we're going right into Iraq right after that. Are you with me?' And Tony Blair said 'Yes!'"
All of the above was put in play on day one of this Bush administration, following the theft 12/12/00 of the American presidency by the five rabid Republican members of the United States Supreme Court: Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia & Clarence Thomas. These individuals are particularly accountable for the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of George Walker Bush, which "high crimes" have been reintroduced by the bombshell remarks of former press secretary to Mr. Bush, Scott McClellan in his forthcoming memoir to be published in April. They are at the center of the initial Bush presidential conspiracy; to risk the blood, treasure and international goodwill of the United States to benefit a foreign power, the state of Israel. Here are corroborating excerpts from James Bamford's 2004 publication A Pretext For War, pages 261 & 399.
"Then Bush addressed the sole items on the agenda for his first high-level national security meeting. The topics were not terrorism - a subject he barely mentioned during the campaign - or nervousness over China or Russia, but Israel and Iraq. From the very first moment, the Bush foreign policy would focus on three key objectives: Get rid of Saddam Hussein, end American involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and rearrange the dominoes in the Middle East. A key to the policy shift would be the concept of 'preemption'"..."A key part of the plan was to get the United States to pull out of peace negotiations and simply let Israel take care of the Palestinians as it saw fit."
And now we are dealing with people - Oklahoma's David Boren, Georgia's Sam Nunn and New York's Demo-Republican Michael Bloomberg - whose political calculations run deep and undercover. What we know is that none of them have exhibited principles of the Democratic Party of the last forty years. Are they establishing a Ross Perot-like effort (in '92 it was Perot who siphoned off enough votes to stop a second term for George H. W. Bush) to deny a Democratic victory in 2008, or is it a serious effort to put a Jewish American in the White House, one more palatable than, say, the divorced Orthodox Joe Lieberman [Bloomberg has an odd married history, and has never been asked about it. William Safir (aka Safire), the longtime columnist for The New York Times (his position now held by another Jewish American, David Brooks), predicts (12/31/07) that the Republican 2008 ticket will be John McCain-Michael Bloomberg, two men desperate to be President, primarily for their own legacies, neither one of whom has challenged George Walker Bush's seven presidential years of infamy. Mr. Bloomberg's promotion was energized 1/15/08 by a Gerald Rafshoon and Doug Bailey, long time Republican consultant, joining the ubiquitous Sam Waterston and his Unity08, who announced a 50-state petition drive to "draft" the multi-billionaire.].
Is part of this an ongoing effort to assure Israel's control of the Levant? These are some of the questions that need to be asked. Is there anyone in the national media/press who will ask them?
The once great (? But, remember it was The Times that was willing to give Nixon-Kissinger a pass on Watergate.) The New York Times has gradually become, in the last seven years, the most self-serving major newspaper in these United States. We desperately need another national newspaper NOW, which is not compromised by its ethnicity. Answering our prayers the 1/6/08 Washington Post publishes an article by former Senator George McGovern (defeated by Richard Nixon in 1972 even as the national media was concealing the Republican Party's involvement in Watergate), an article which details the seven years of "high crimes and misdemeanors" of Bush/Cheney even as former "Democratic" senators David Boren and Sam Nunn, along with Repub/Demo/Inde New York mayor Mike Bloomberg (fellow notable Joe Lieberman also calls himself an Independent as he campaigns with John McCain in New Hampshire), these former patricians are pressuring the present Presidential candidates to "renounce partisan gridlock", i.e. give Bush/Cheney and their Republican Party a pass on the major political crime of the twenty-first century, the shredding from within of the Constitution of the United States.
We also need to consider, even though it's never mentioned, that a majority of Jewish Americans feel deeply indebted to Mr. Bush, as do powerful members of Jewish communities all over the world. These potent groups, both here and abroad, are why the once-great BBC has the temerity to not only bar the subject of why we and the Brits went into Iraq, but also promotes its daily World Have Your Say with the duplicitous "Where You Set The Agenda", a slogan possibly inspired by NPR's present-day Talk Of The Nation, the agenda of which, like everything else on NPR, is also restricted, as are its guests and callers, since National Public Radio fired Morning Edition's Bob Edwards. Like the BBC, the "Progressives" of Talk Of The Nation are most averse to discussing the murderous fashion in which Israelis "discourage" any hope for a Palestinian State.
Mr. Bush has removed one of the two major threats to Israel's design for the Levant, and, in lockstep, the overwhelmingly-leading, Jewish supported John ("I'm Don Imus' candidate") McCain has stated a willingness to keep American troops and bases in Iraq for one hundred years (and we've spent one trillion dollar$ to establish that "beachhead"). John Edwards, in contrast, has pledged to have the US out of Iraq within ten months of his inauguration. Regarding the second threat, Iran, that Israel expects Bush to nullify, picture American warships steaming in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the total northeast coast of which IS Iran. Bush says Iran is "provocative" as he travels to Israel to support Israelis as they plan to finally eliminate Palestine, and with OUR money. The American people will decide next November which policy prevails, but in the meantime we must assess the mounting cost to ourselves, our country and the world, the cost of the Bush/Cheney administration and another Republican regime waiting in the wings. Here a statement which appeared in the West Coast outreach (The Oregonian 1/6/08) of the vast Newhouse publication giant (Newhouse also owns the Sunday "magazine", the increasingly advertising-laden Parade):
"Are we serious about stopping terrorism? Shouldn't we recognize what most drives the anger behind it? King Abdullah II of Jordan says the main reason for Muslim terrorism is the Israel-Palestine situation. That is the core issue, he says, from which all the other troubles flow.
'The root cause of terrorism is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,' says Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who is increasingly dealing with spreading extremism.
'The West will not know peace until the Palestinians have peace,' Osama bin Laden has sworn. And you can take that to the bank.
Hunting down and destroying individual terrorists makes us feel better but does little to end the problem. There's an unending pipeline of new terrorists coming, until we deal decisively with the cause of the trouble.
Attacking Muslim countries is like pouring gasoline on a fire. It increases our difficulties around the world. It also meets the definition of insanity." John Goodwin Lebanon, Oregon
It's so basic that despite the embargo by the Media/Press, the public gets it, and is not deceived by George Bush's remark 1/7/08: "I said we're always going to have a timetable (except for Iraq) and one timetable is the departure of President George W. Bush from the White House. Not that I'm the great heroic figure, but they know me (Yes. The radical right-wing government of Israel, from Sharon through Olmert, they know our billion$!) and they're comfortable with me (Yes. Our billion$ have made them not only comfortable but recklessly so. That's the problem.) and I'm a known quantity!"
Known quantity? Even moreso. On the 1/10/08 Lehrer NewsHour Judy Woodruff played an audio of George W. Bush: "The establishment of the 'State' of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian people deserve it. There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967." Ms. Woodruff: "The president's trip began yesterday when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and urged Israelis to put an end to UNAUTHORIZED OUTPOSTS in the West Bank (Huh? That's the proverbial aperture through which you could drive a column of Israeli tanks and bulldozers FOUR ABREAST, i.e. the Israelis, as the whole world knows, have been constantly enlarging settlement blocs in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. And can you imagine the Israelis giving up the beachfront of the Gaza Strip, or the aquifer under Ariel?). These items from DemocracyNow's 1/11/08 broadcast are illustrative.
"President Bush has concluded a three-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories. The President has left Israel one day after meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.
President Bush: 'Some day, I hope that as a result of the formation of a Palestinian state, there won't be walls and checkpoints and people will be able to move freely in a democratic state and that's the vision.'
Bush later joked about the Israeli checkpoints, saying his motorcade had no problems passing through.
President Bush: 'You'll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped but I am not sure if that happens to the average person.'"
"Bush called for an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. But he did not back down from his endorsement of Israel's intent to retain large Jewish-only settlement blocs that Palestinians say will make peace impossible. Bush called on Israel to dismantle unauthorized settlement outposts scattered across the West Bank. But he did not criticize Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's declaration that Israel's pledge to freeze settlement expansion only applies to those settlements that Israel doesn't intend on keeping. Israel agreed to freeze settlement activity under the U.S.-backed road map but has continued to build in East Jerusalem and its large West Bank settlements. For the first time President Bush called for a compensation fund for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in 1948. He did not offer details. The value of lost Palestinian land is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. President Bush's visit to the West Bank came after a day of talks in Israel. The Independent of London reports Bush's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 'had the flavor of a love-in on a grand scale which transcended mere diplomacy.' In Gaza, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed Bush's visit.
Sami Abu Zuhri: 'Bush reiterated empty promises, upon which we, the Palestinians, hold no hopes, because we had many promises before and he never fulfilled, and he will never do, now during his last days in the White House. We condemn the Palestinian president statements when he spoke about fulfilling all the consequences to the Palestinian people.'"
Bush's trip comes amidst news the Israeli government is trying to block the publication of a key report detailing its expanding settlement activity in the West Bank. According to the Israeli group Peace Now, the confidential 2006 report provides the Israeli government's most comprehensive analysis to date of settlement activity beyond its internationally-recognized borders. The report is said to detail widespread expansion in dozens of settlements, which Israel vowed to stop under the U.S.-backed Road Map.
And this much-focused media extravaganza on the "attack" by the Iranian speed boats? Whatever an article in the 1/11/08 The New York Times might state in a subhead - "Two nation's versions of an event may not be contradictory." - regarding the U.S. Navy and Iranian patrol speed boats in the Strait of Hormuz 1/6/08, the blanket coverage by the American Media/Press to alarm the American people regarding the "imminent threat" of Iran reminds of Saddam's "WMDs" in 2001, as the Ray McGovern experience with Jim Lehrer's Margaret Warner on 6/6/05 (a few paragraphs back), uncovered. Our Media/Press knows well how to misinform the public. There is no other plausible explanation for George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney being able to complete their infamous terms of office in this fashion.
The Pulitzer-deserving Amy Goodman had this on the 1/11/08 DemocracyNow.
AMY GOODMAN: "Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His latest article for IPS News analyzes how the official US version of the naval incident has begun to unravel. He joins us now from Washington, D.C. Gareth Porter, welcome."
GARETH PORTER: "Good morning, Amy."
AMY GOODMAN: "Can you talk about everything that happened from Sunday, what President Bush said, what the Pentagon was alleging, and now what we understand?"
GARETH PORTER: "Well, this alleged crisis or confrontation on the high seas is really much less than what met the eyes of the American public as it was reported by news media. And the story really began from leaks from the Pentagon. I mean, there were Pentagon officials apparently calling reporters and telling them that something had happened in the Strait of Hormuz, which represented a threat to American ships and that there was a near battle on the high seas. The way it was described to reporters, it was made to appear to be a major threat to the ships and a major threat of war. And that's the way it was covered by CNN, by CBS and other networks, as well as by print media.
Then I think the next major thing that happened was a briefing by the commander of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, the Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, which is very interesting. If you look carefully at the transcript, which was not reported accurately by the media, or not reported at all practically, the commander, or rather Vice Admiral Cosgriff actually makes it clear that the ships were never in danger, that they never believed they were in danger, and that they were never close to firing on the Iranian boats. And this is the heart of what actually happened, which was never reported by the US media.
So I think that the major thing to really keep in mind about this is that it was blown up into a semi-crisis by the Pentagon and that the media followed along very supinely. And I must say this is perhaps the worst?--the most egregious case of sensationalist journalism in the service of the interests of the Pentagon, the Bush administration, that I have seen so far."
Postscript. To buttress his charge that Iran is an "imminent threat", from the world's most-ornate, three billion dollar hotel in the United Arab Emirates George Walker Bush states 1/13/08 that Iran is now "The Face of Terror" in the world. Words fail us.
But not Amy Goodman 1/16/08 as she described events in the region about which Mr. Bush spoke, according to Judy Woodruff, on 1/10/08: "The establishment of the State of Palestine is long overdue. The Palestinian People deserve it."
Here the response of the Israelis:
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the Palestinian death toll from Israel's latest attack on the Gaza Strip has hit nineteen. It was the highest single-day Palestinian toll in more than a year. Another fifty Palestinians were reportedly injured. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the assault as a 'massacre.'
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: 'Today there was a massacre and butchery against our people, and we say to the world, to Israel and to all the people, crimes such as these, one can not remain silent over, and in no way whatsoever can it bring peace.'
The fighting came just days after President Bush visited both Israel and the West Bank to promote U.S.-brokered negotiations. At least 115 Palestinians have now been killed in Israeli attacks since the Bush administration launched the latest phase of talks in Annapolis two months ago. Dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh said the Palestinian Authority was partly responsible for the ongoing attacks.
Ismael Haniyeh: 'These attacks are the gifts from Bush, the gifts for whom we clapped for Bush, and the gifts for the people who sold their nation just for Bush. But we tell them, Bush is leaving, and you are leaving, but this case, this nation, this power, and this dignity will stay forever.'
Meanwhile, several Israelis have been wounded in Palestinian rocket fire on nearby Israeli towns. Hamas said it took part in the rocket-firing for the first time since seizing power in Gaza last year. An Ecuadorian national working on an Israeli farm was also killed by Palestinian sniper fire. Israeli President Shimon Peres said Israel was acting to prevent Palestinian attacks.
Israeli President Shimon Peres: 'We left Gaza completely. We took out our army, we took out our settlements. There is no single Israeli in the Gaza Strip. It's totally in the hands of the Palestinians, and we don't understand exactly why they are the shooting, what do they want to achieve. But as long as they are shooting, we are left without a choice but to answer and stop it.'
Israel has continued attacks on Gaza after rejecting a truce offer from Hamas last month. Israel has also cut fuel, water and electricity supplies, barred almost all Palestinians from leaving, including those needing medical care, and cut off staples, including food and bottled water."
The Israelis have been targeting Gaza with airstrikes continuously this last week, but page three of the 1/18/08 The New York Times has but one story, by Isabel Kershner, datelined Sderot, Israel (her stories usually originate in Jerusalem). The Israelis killed over thirty Gazans last week including civilians. Here, Amy Goodman's 1/18/07 DemocracyNow.
"In Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel has ordered the closure of all crossings into the Gaza Strip. The border had already been heavily restricted, but now all goods have been blocked, including humanitarian supplies from the UN. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees condemned the move, saying it will only worsen an already dire situation. Israel says its trying to thwart rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. Palestinians have fired some 150 rockets since Tuesday, causing several injuries. Israeli defense ministry spokesperson Shlomo Dror said: 'It's unacceptable that people in Sderot are living in fear every day and people in the Gaza Strip are living life as usual.' The closure comes as Israel continues daily attacks on Gaza that have killed more than thirty-two Palestinians in the past week, including nineteen on Tuesday alone. In the latest Israeli attack, one Palestinian was killed and four others were wounded today in an airstrike in north Gaza. A Gaza resident said the situation there is catastrophic.
Resident: 'The situation in Gaza is dire with the Israeli escalation on the Strip and the incursions that take place. As well as the situation near the crossing, the closing of the crossings, and the humanitarian situation is catastrophic on the residents and the people.'
Hamas has taken part in the rocket attacks for the first time since seizing control of Gaza last June. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports today Hamas appears to have settled on a policy of launching the rockets to force Israel into a ceasefire. Israel rejected a truce offer from Hamas last month. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised a continued 'war' on Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: 'A war is going on in the south, every day, every night. The most daring and boldest of our soldiers and members of the security services are taking part in it. This war will not stop. The moment will come when the scales will tip in this war and cause the firing in the south to be different from what it is today.'"
However, Ms. Kershner's 1/18/08 article focused a rocket which "crashed through an outside wall into the Cohen family's kitchen, sending the refrigerator flying across the room and blasting off its door, which lodged in the ceiling. The ground floor was covered with broken glass and debris, and the aroma of sweet Sabbath wine from a shattered bottle hung in the air." Ms. Kershner made no mention, nor did The Times, of the "Jericho-3" missile launched 1/17/08 by Israel, suitable for delivering nuclear warheads with a range which could pulverize the capitals of every country in the Middle East, none of whom have such a weapon. Ah, yes. The Bush ally in the region is "definitely", as Dustin Hoffman might say, pursuing a path to peace.
Needless to say, the socalled premiere Saturday Morning Edition News weekly wrap-up report by Scott Simon and Dan Schorr on NPR made no mention of that missile launch by Israel, embargoed any and all items from the Middle East, even as Simon was engaging in speculation regarding French President Sarkozy's romantic specifics with his paramour. Mr. Simon married a French woman a few years back and regaled his audience with his French family. Simon & Schorr? Anything but hard news, and the Israelis are off limits.
And all of this is taking place within the purview of the notorious Zionist Norman Podhoretz, the featured speaker 1/10/08 at the 92nd Street Y in New York city (with which Jewish Americans substitute for the YMCA), as his son-in-law William Kristol joins the Op-Ed columnists of The New York Times and the slippery Jewish Frenchman Bernard-Henri Levy, an early and clamorous, like Richard Perle, supporter of the war against Iraq, schedules his Y appearance for 3/5/08 and Dennis Prager readies his The Case for Judaism for 3/11/08.
And the ethnicity of those who direct, relate and report (i.e. select and filter) local, national, and international news and information is not an issue, particularly in this critical Presidential election year?
To compound the bias, the media, most notably Jim Lehrer and his people and General Electric's Brian Williams and Tim Russert, has been working overtime to advertise the Clinton/Obama rift, primarily to ease the path of Republican John McCain to the White House, endorsed 1/25/08 by The New York Times. The Sunday before the New Hampshire primary Russert had McCain on Meet The Press and McCain won. Russert repeated the favor the Sunday before the critical Florida primary and, again, McCain won. Corporate Media tilts the electoral process, has eliminated what little political balance existed on national airwaves (the third wealthiest billionaire, a Sheldon G. Adelson, Las Vegas mogul worth 28 billion$, funds both Freedom's Watch AND Dennis Miller) and has virtually bankrupted the United States Treasury.
Can you remember 2000, and how "likeable" George Bush was and how "suspect" was Albert Gore, former United States Senator AND the most able Vice President in a century? We've seen this media tilt to the Republican candidate FOR YEARS. Had enough?
Let us face facts. The 2000 "election" of George Walker Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney, made possible by Wall Street and radical Jewish American influence on the scheming Republican five members of the United States Supreme Court (named in an earlier paragraph) had a conspiratorial purpose. From the beginning Bush/Cheney pursued double targeting - to secure a substantial source of oil for US energy companies and, also, underwrite Israel's effort to finalize, essentially, a theocracy, the State of Israel (Why else the Star of David flag?) in control of the Levant without the interference of the Palestinians or Saddam Hussein. Hence the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. Everything else is an illusion. It's why Jewish Americans in their gut are reluctant to recognize the collateral damage done to the United States and its Constitution by this arguably worst administration since South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter. On the 1/24/08 Terri Gross' Fresh Air Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy (note it's not the United States tragedy) said: "I don't think he's guilty of 'high crimes and misdemeanors'"..."Give him a little sympathetic room" "I had a positive relationship with him." We suspect that Walter Isaacson's Aspen Institute (he's the former head of CNN) will be similarly generous toward Mr. Bush, even though his disregard for the people of the United States and their Constitution exceeds that of Richard Nixon and his mentor Henry Kissinger.
Here the 1/24/08 work of a courageous Jewish American, Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow.org, and her conversation with an equally informed and responsible Arab American in Chicago.
"AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Chicago to Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Ali Abunimah. Your response to what's happening now in Gaza, from here in the United States?
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, I'd like to say that the suffering in Gaza has been so unremitting and so horrible and will continue. But I think we have to recognize and celebrate the resistance and the people power of the people in Gaza. And we have to recognize that there has been a deliberate siege on them by Israel, a decision taken by the leaders of Israel to starve and inflict suffering on a million-and-a-half people.
The government of Egypt has been complicit in this. They could have opened the borders months ago. Israel has been besieging Gaza for almost two years in this way. Egypt didn't have to wait until Palestinians took matters into their own hands to free themselves from this barbaric siege.
The United States is complicit. And, by the way, Amy, this is another setback for the Bush Doctrine. The people of Gaza have been the victims of an experiment by the Bush administration and Israel, where, first of all, they had a democratic election. The US and Israel didn't like that result, so they tried to overthrow Hamas using Contra-style militias and using a starvation siege. Hamas turned the tables on them and got rid of those militias. So they decided to tighten the siege on the people of Gaza, and the people of Gaza decided to break out of it themselves.
But the thing we have to absolutely focus on is the responsibility here. Israel, as the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, remains fully responsible for everything that happens there. Under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, passed, by the way, after the horrors of World War II, Israel is legally required to provide as much food, water, medicine and fuel as the civilian population needs.
And the excuse that the Israelis are using, that they're doing this in response to rocket fire, we know for a fact that Israel has rejected ceasefire after ceasefire put forward by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. We know for a fact that there are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. And yet Israel continues to carry out extrajudicial executions in the West Bank and military attacks on Nablus, on Balata refugee camp and all the other places in the West Bank.
[In a 1/6/08 article by AP's Terence Hunt, preceding Bush's 1/9/08 arrival in Israel, his first trip there since becoming President (he visited in 1998 to assure Sharon and Netanyahu that if he won the American election they could count on his hands-off policy vis-a-vis Israel vs Palestinians, and that he would eliminate the threat to Israel's design for the region posed by Iraq), Mr. Hunt, exhibiting the lack of information or a subservience to the Israeli Lobby, stated: "He (Bush) also will stop in the Palestinian-governed West Bank". Mr. Abunimah takes exception to that Palestinian-governed term of Mr. Hunt.]
We have to be clear that what Israel is trying to do is a massive experiment in ethnic cleansing to get rid of a million-and-a-half people who do not fit its demographic desires and the desire to remain a state where one ethnic group has special and better rights by virtue of its religion. That's what's going on."
Ali Abunimah: "And we've seen that time and again. John Edwards, the same, staunchly pro-Israel. On the Republican side, you have John McCain, who talks like a maverick on other issues, but on this one he has gone out of his way to offer full support for Israel. You have Huckabee, who is on the Christian evangelical right, that is historically not very friendly towards Jewish people, but is very strongly pro-Israel for reasons of biblical prophecy. And Huckabee, who is--according to a report in the Jerusalem Post, talked about a Palestinian state in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, so really talking about the forced transfer or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as a solution. That, unfortunately, is the level of discourse.
And maybe it's because there's such a consensus in the mainstream on unconditional support for Israel, no matter how illegal its actions or how harmful they are to the United States, perhaps because there's such a consensus, that's why there's no debate."
"Bush Asserts Right to Ignore Law Barring Funds for Permanent U.S. Bases in Iraq
The news comes as President Bush has declared he has the right to bypass a new law that prohibits the use of taxpayer money to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq. The ban was passed as part of the new National Defense Authorization Act. Hours after signing the bill Monday, Bush issued a signing statement asserting his right to ignore the restriction that bars federal funding 'to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing' of U.S. forces or 'to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.' Bush's signing statement also asserted his right to ignore a measure that boosts protection for whistleblowers employed by companies with government contracts. And the statement also objects to the creation of an independent commission on contracting fraud and waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.
UN Security Council Drops Gaza Resolution After U.S. Opposition
And at the UN, the Security Council has ended efforts to adopt a statement on the crisis in the Gaza Strip after the Bush administration said it wouldn't support it. The U.S. was the lone country on the fifteen-member council to oppose the measure. The resolution condemned both Israeli and Palestinian attacks as well as Israel's blockade of food, fuel and medical supplies. But the U.S. says the measure didn't go far enough in focusing on Palestinian rocket fire."
"A new report from New Yorker correspondent Seymour Hersh says there is no evidence that the Syrian facility bombed by Israel last September was involved in nuclear weapons. Israel says it launched the attack based on intelligence of nuclear activity. But citing American, Israeli and Syrian sources, Hersh says Israel did not know what it was targeting. Hersh says Israel's main objective was to send a message to Iran."
For some reason, not all of Amy Goodman's 2/5/08 conversation with Philip Shenon has been available on transcript. Here are key segments.
"New Book Alleges 9/11 Commissioner Philip Zelikow Minimized Scrutiny of Bush Admin Failure to Prevent al-Qaeda Attack
New York Times reporter Philip Shenon joins us to talk about his new book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. Shenon says 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow had close ties to both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Bush political adviser Karl Rove. He suggests that Zelikow sought to minimize the Bush administration's responsibility for failing to prevent the September 11th attacks.
AMY GOODMAN: The executive director of the federal 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, had much closer ties to the Bush administration than publicly disclosed. This is according to an explosive new book by New York Times investigative reporter Philip Shenon. It's called The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.
PHILIP SHENON: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's talk about Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. First, tell us how it was formed and then his control of the commission.
PHILIP SHENON: The commission was formed by a law passed in Congress in 2002 after a long and very tortured debate. It was a ten-member panel: five Democrats, five Republicans. The only person for the commission chosen by the White House was the chairman, initially Henry Kissinger. Kissinger stepped down, and he was replaced by Tom Kean, the governor of New Jersey. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate chose their five representatives.
Early on, after Governor Kean came on board, there was a search for an executive director, somebody to run the investigation on a day-to-day basis. There's a polite fiction in Washington that the reports of blue ribbon commissions are written by the blue ribbon commissioners. Well, that's not usually the case. They're usually written by a professional staff led by a congressional researcher or a scholar. In this case, Kean and Hamilton came across the resume quite early on of Philip Zelikow, a very well respected historian at the University of Virginia. They contact him, and Zelikow agrees to come on board.
AMY GOODMAN: And he had served on the blue ribbon commission investigating the 2000 vote that got Bush elected.
PHILIP SHENON: Exactly. And he had earned the praise of both Republicans and Democrats on that commission. It's one of the commissioners from the Electoral Reform Commission who joins the 9/11 Commission and forwards Zelikow's name to Kean and Hamilton. And as I say, Zelikow comes on board quite early.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about, in your book, the commission, that's just being released this week, just being released today, Zelikow's secret relationship with Karl Rove. He's this week becoming a commentator on Fox News, but much more relevant was his top status within the White House, top adviser to President Bush.
PHILIP SHENON: Well, what I can tell you is that in 2003, Karl Rove called Zelikow a number of times at the commission. We know this because there are phone logs recording Rove's calls in. Now, Zelikow had a lot of ties to the Bush administration, and that was known to some degree when he signed onto the investigation. And he had assured the commission that he would do his best to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest and would cut off most of these ties with his friends in the White House and elsewhere.
It becomes known on the commission staff in 2003 that despite these promises, Zelikow is having conversations with, of all people, Karl Rove, and this creates, as you might imagine, a huge amount of alarm and suspicion on the commission staff. You know, what is the executive director of the 9/11 Commission doing talking to Karl Rove? Now, Rove's people at the White House, you know, his friends and allies there, and Zelikow insist that there was--that this was completely innocent and that this involved Zelikow's work at the University of Virginia. And indeed Zelikow's work at the University of Virginia centered around presidential histories, so Karl Rove is somebody he would have normally at the university had some sort of contact with, I assume.
And there's an odd development thereafter, which is Zelikow calls in his secretary, shuts the door and informs her that she is no longer to keep phone logs of his contacts with the White House. The secretary is alarmed by this, worries that she's being asked to do something improper and then contacts the chief lawyer for the commission to alert him to what's happened. As I say, this whole sequence creates a great alarm and a great suspicion about what Zelikow was up to.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Philip Shenon. His book has just come out. It's called The Commission. His relationship, Philip Zelikow's relationship with Condoleezza Rice, how far back does it go, and what does it mean for the ultimate report that comes out?
PHILIP SHENON: Well, they have a relationship that goes way back. They were both members of the National Security Council staff in the first Bush administration, Bush 41. They formed a close relationship at that point. After that presidency, Zelikow goes off to Harvard, and Rice returns to Stanford, yet they stay in touch, and they write a book together about German reunification. After President Bush 43 enters the White House, he sets up a transition team for the National Security Council at Rice's recommendation, and Rice tasks Zelikow to join the transition team, specifically with the responsibility for reviewing counterterrorism operations at the White House.
Now, some of this was known at the time of Zelikow's hiring. I think the question is, how much of that was known? And, of course, Rice was at the heart of the 9/11 Commission investigation. You know, it was her actions in the spring and summer of 2001 that were among the most important subjects for investigation by the 9/11 Commission, yet the commission was being run on a day-to-day basis by somebody who was undeniably a very close friend of hers.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice publicly testifying before the 9/11 Commission. It was April 8, 2004, an exchange between Rice and Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: You acknowledged to us in your interview of February 7, 2004, that Richard Clarke told you that al-Qaeda cells were in the United States. Did you tell the President at any time prior to August 6 of the existence of al-Qaeda cells in the United States?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: First, let me just make certain--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: If you could just answer that question--
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, first--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: --because I only have a very limited -
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but it's important--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Did you tell the President?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: --that I also address--it's also important, Commissioner, that I address the other issues that you have raised. So I will do it quickly, but if you'll just give me a moment.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Well, my only question to you is whether you--
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I understand, Commissioner, but I will--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: --told the President.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: If you will just give me a moment, I will address fully the questions that you've asked. First of all, yes, the August 6 PDB was in response to questions of the President. In that sense, he asked that this be done. It was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaeda's operations. Dick Clarke had told me, I think in a memorandum--I remember it as being only a line or two--that there were al-Qaeda cells in the United States.
Now, the question is, what did we need to do about that? And I also understood that that was what the FBI was doing, that the FBI was pursuing these al-Qaeda cells. I believe in the August 6 memorandum it says that there were seventy full field investigations under way of these cells. And so, there was no recommendation that we do something about this. The FBI was pursuing it. I really don't remember, Commissioner, whether I discussed this with the President. I--
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I remember very well that the President was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al-Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.
RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title that PDB?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I believe the title was 'Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.'
AMY GOODMAN: Condoleezza Rice being questioned by Richard Ben-Veniste of the 9/11 Commission. The significance of this interchange, Philip Shenon?
PHILIP SHENON: Those were probably the five most dramatic moments in the two years I covered the commission. Well, there was a rather remarkable document that was handed to President Bush in August 2001 titled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US.' It was his--it's the daily brief. He--the President receives sort of a super-secret newspaper every morning that has the most important news the CIA wants to get across to him, and that was the headline on the PDB on August 6, 2001, just, you know, a month before 9/11. And the question is why, after the President and Rice got this document, they didn't do much more to try to prepare for the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike?
Now, I will tell you, the August 6 PDB, you can make too much of it, and you can make too little of it. A lot of the information in the PDB was wrong. A lot of it was historical that dated back several years. But there were some fairly specific current warnings, current intelligence suggesting that something was going on. And it actually refers to concerns that terrorists might be conducting surveillance of the skyline of New York City and that hijacked planes might somehow be involved in whatever threat was underway.
AMY GOODMAN: And what ultimately got reported in the commission report of Condoleezza Rice, what she knew, when she knew it? What effect did Philip Zelikow have on that?
PHILIP SHENON: Well, Zelikow apparently used the term 'Clarke-centric.' He kept telling the staff that he thought the report that they were writing was too Clarke-centric, too much drawn from and defending the position of Richard Clarke, who had argued, you know, rather explosively in 2004 that President Bush and Condi Rice had ignored his warnings that something terrible was about to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: How did the Bush administration tried to destroy Richard Clarke's credibility?
PHILIP SHENON: They had quite a campaign going, both publicly and behind the scenes, to lead the public to believe that Richard Clarke was making these damning allegations either because he was a very partisan Democrat who wanted to see President Bush ousted from the White House in the elections that November, and they also engaged in a behind-the-scenes attack to feed questions to the 9/11 Commission that they thought would undermine Clarke's credibility."
AMY GOODMAN: "Phillip, I wanted to play for you the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission Lee Hamilton denying claims that Zelikow worked to minimize the Bush administration's responsibility for failing to prevent the 9/11 attack.
LEE HAMILTON: We found him (Zelikow) to be very fair-minded, quite impartial, very rigorous in his searching out of the facts, and he certainly did not try to protect the Bush administration or to protect anybody else.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the 9/11 commission vice-chair Lee Hamilton interviewed on NBC's Nightly News.
PHILIP SHENON: Well, Congressman Hamilton has always, throughout the investigation, was always a big champion of Dr. Zelikow's. Mr Hamilton was very much involved in the decision to hire Dr. Zelikow in the first place, I will tell you that I think there are a large number of people on the commission staff at least, who would certainly disagree with Congressman Hamilton."
As more of the transcript becomes available and we are able to put it into context, you will see it here.