Juan Cole has posted a long, thoughtful and critical essay about AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee), the espionage case reported Friday and US Middle East policy. While I think Cole overstates the amount of influence Israel exercises in Congress, his post is well worth reading: Israeli Spy in Pentagon Linked to AIPAC 08/28/04.
Cole notes:
Note that over 80% of American Jews vote Democrat[ic], that the majority of American Jews opposed the Iraq war (more were against it than in the general population), and that American Jews have been enormously important in securing civil liberties for all Americans. Moreover, Israel has been a faithful ally of the US and deserves our support in ensuring its security. The Likudniks [supporters of the rightwing Israeli Likud Party] like to pretend that they represent American Jewry, but they do not. And they like to suggest that objecting to their policies is tantamount to anti-Semitism, which is sort of like suggesting that if you don't like Chile's former dictator Pinochet, you are bigotted against Latinos. ...
The [Israeli] Likud [Party's] policies of reversing Oslo and stealing people's land and making their lives hell has produced enormous amounts of terrorism against Israel, and the Likudniks have cleverly turned that to their political advantage. Aggression and annexation is necessary, they argue, because there is terrorism. Some of them now openly speak of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, using the same argument. But when the Oslo peace process looked like it would go somewhere, terrorism tapered off (it did not end, but then peace had not been achieved).
The drawback for the US in all this is that US government backing for Sharon's odious policies makes it hated in the Muslim world. ...
Moreover, AIPAC leverages its power by an alliance with the Christian Right, which has adopted a bizarre ideology of "Christian Zionism." It holds that the sooner the Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, the sooner Christ will come back. Without millions of these Christian Zionist allies, AIPAC would be much less influential and effective.
On another item related to the espionage case, long-timereaders of Old Hickory's Weblog may remember this item: Will the Iran-Contra Crowd Ever Go Away? 10/17/03. It referenced a Guardian news article about two Pentagon officials meeting with the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, a prominent player in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s. The Guardian did not name the two Pentagon officials.
This Knight-Ridder story - FBI investigating whether Pentagon official spied for Israel by Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott 08/27/04 - names the two as Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin. Franklin is the official named by Laura Rozen and now by the Washington Post as the person targeted by the FBI probe. Rozen speculates that the FBI may be leaning on Franklin to give to implicate someone else in something more serious than the leak of which the news reports claim the FBI suspects Franklin.
Whenever the names of Iran-Contra figures pop up in connection with Bush administration operations, expect trouble.
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