One of Marty Peretz's Friends Believes in the Israel Lobby
Ginsberg is far more pro-Israel than, say, Walt and Mearsheimer, but he was intellectually honest enough to talk about the power of the Israel lobby. The lobby enjoys a reputation as "Washington's most powerful lobby." During the Reagan era, an "important role" for the pro-Israel forces was played by "'neoconservative Jewish intellectuals who used their access to the print and broadcast media to promote national defense." Reagan called on these pro-Israel forces to support his policies in Latin America, and "to portray these policies as part and parcel of the same struggle against communism as Israel's fight against the P.L.O. Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, obliged."
(Then it was Communism. Now it's the fight against Islamic terrorism. Just check the box, and deny the Palestinians basic rights...)
Ginsberg goes even further than Walt and Mearsheimer (as I have in this blog) in the sociologial vein. "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual, and political life," he states. Indeed, they are "extremely influential." And Jewish "ties to Israel," he notes, have sometimes played a part in accusations of dual loyalty: "the potential result [of these ties and the suspicions they cause] is to undermine the position of Jews in American government and policy-making capacities—long a major source of Jewish influence."
Ginsberg establishes these facts to serve a point of view that Walt and Mearsheimer and leftists like myself would disagree with. He's pro-Israel, and fearful (as I believe David Brooks is, though Ginsberg does not resort to code) about a radical populist reaction against a tiny Jewish elite. Ginsberg is concerned that the gentile American powers-that-be would then sell out the Jews. Fair enough; I have many friends who believe this too: that the U.S. is basically run by the goyim and we Jews are simply convenient, for now, and watch your back. But what if you don't share this concern? What if you are a universalist, as opposed to Peretz/Wieseltier's particularism? What if you were horrified by a visit to the occupied territories (and angered that Jewish particularists cannot even describe the lands as occupied, let alone face what religious nationalist Jews have done there)? What if you are concerned about the way that an extremist U.S. foreign policy has emulated that occupation, alienated the Arab world and made the Middle East more dangerous than ever?
Answer: You should be able to use the same points that Ginsberg marshals—influence, Jewish neoconservativism, and a powerful lobby—without being labelled an anti-Semite.
this is my favorite posting by dipshit, it demonstrates how he weaves his made-up crap into his self-hatred:
http://mondoweiss.observer.com/2006/08/how-muslims-are-prevented-from-visiting-a-holy-site-in-jerus.html
Dipshit, decode this:
On Friday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar kicked things off at the "Death to Israel" rally in Khan Yunis, by declaring that "We will never recognize Israel, and in the end the Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left," said Zahar, a founding father of Hamas. "We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land."
This column is always enlightening: it flushes out the Israel lobby hit-men (and women) who comment in a hair-trigger way.
Simply put, Israel is a state best defined by its acts of creation: terrorism and ethnic cleansing of Arabs. Until the "Israel lobby" comes to grips with that, America will be divided into two groups "Israel" salespeople, and those who know the truth about the last western colony and terrorist state.
does it bring you joy little phil when this element crawls out of the sewer into your tent?:
"Simply put, Israel is a state best defined by its acts of creation: terrorism and ethnic cleansing of Arabs. Until the "Israel lobby" comes to grips with that, America will be divided into two groups "Israel" salespeople, and those who know the truth about the last western colony and terrorist state."
wiseking, although I'm doubtful that you can actually understand it, I'm still going to recommend that you reread what Ginsberg wrote--
"the potential result [of these ties and the suspicions they cause] is to undermine the position of Jews in American government and policy-making capacities"
As in government as in a blog comments section. People are not going to pay attention to you if they sense your loyalty is to something other than the truth.
Ah yes, little Phil the universalist. He doesn't soil himself with mundane things like the rest of us. He's better more noble. Little Phil here is how it works in the real world. The Arabs want Israel destroyed and every Jew dead. THEY SAY THAT EXPLICITLY AND IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. Your either on Israels side or your on their side. You my little jewboy friend are on their side. Couch it whatever way you want but that's what it comes down to and that's what the evidence supports
one problem with this:
"the potential result [of these ties and the suspicions they cause] is to undermine the position of Jews in American government and policy-making capacities"
PHIL WEISS IS THE SOURCE. This means that it is probably not accurate- note how Weiss qualifies the quote with 'sometimes' and all of the other added bullshit, including the crap in brackets. I'd take a look at the book before commenting. Wiess doesn't report- he "decodes" the truth to fit his self-hating reality.
You're waiting to confirm the quote before you'll recognize that Jewish special pleading lowers your credibility?
Oy vei.
This is not a quote, it's Weiss' bullshit.
Indeed, they are "extremely influential." And Jewish "ties to Israel," he notes, have sometimes played a part in accusations of dual loyalty: "the potential result [of these ties and the suspicions they cause] is to undermine the position of Jews in American government and policy-making capacities�long a major source of Jewish influence."
Check the source, you can't count on Weiss' decoding...
ginsbergs over concern regarding jewish dual loyalty is the exact same concern which preoccupied the assimilated jews who had roosevelts ear while their brethren went up in smoke in europe. they were complicit.
the same type of assimilated jew; ie little philly weiss and his ilk, will not fool us into allowing the next holocaust to be perpetrated against those who have gathered in the land of israel. we are no longer lambs to slaughter. we dont give a flying f-ck about what others think of us nor do we care about their dual loyalty accusations.
"On Friday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar kicked things off at the "Death to Israel" rally in Khan Yunis, by declaring that "We will never recognize Israel, and in the end the Zionists will be like that of the Crusaders, the Persians and the English, who left," said Zahar, a founding father of Hamas. "We want all of Palestine, every centimeter, from the river to the sea, from Rosh Hanikra to Rafah. If we can form a state within the 1967 borders we will do so, but this doesn't mean that we will relinquish our right to every centimeter of Palestine's land."
I support this 100%.
Weiss' ahistorical notion of "universalism" is a bad joke. Would he apply its standards to any other national or ethnic group? Not likely. For Weiss the mission of the Jews is to disperse, disappear, and stop embarrasing him in front of powerful Episcopalians
Thank g-d you're not embarrassed so easily.
The ad-hominem comments on this blog certainly do clog up the discussion.
Israel has a legal right to exist within her 1948 borders under international law. That's by vote of the UN.
Israel then signed the Geneva Conventions. She therefore has the right to occupy land conquered in war for purposes of security, but she has no right to settle her citizens on that land.
Hence the settlements are illegal.
US Christians have a dog in this fight because those settlements inflame Muslim opinion and inspire jihad. It is clear to me that the settlements led to 9/11.
I used to think that the Jewish community in the US (led by those who align with likud, e.g. the Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, except for the President of Meretz) would not go against the interests of their fellow US citizens, and the rest of us could let them take the lead in Middle East policy.
I no longer believe that, and the writings and speeches of Walt and Mearsheimer should be followed up by every Christian, asserting their existential rights. A nuclear explosion in the US certainly challenges the existential rights of US citizens. The Middle East is far beyond a simple conflict between Arab and Jew.
In three recent emergency special sessions of the UN General Assembly, Israeli settlement was cited as a violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. These international humanitarian instruments, forged in the ashes of the Holocaust to prevent future genocidal brutality and oppression, were never invoked in 50 years until the case of condominium construction in Jerusalem during 1998. Was such construction -- any settlement construction -- a violation of the Geneva Convention?
No. The relevant clause, Article 49, prohibits the "occupying power" from transferring population into the "occupied territory." Aside from the fact that the territory is not occupied, but disputed, Morris Abrams, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, had pointed out that the clause refers to the forcible transfer of large populations. By contrast, the settlements involve the voluntary movement of civilians. The U.S. Department of State, accordingly, does not view Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as applicable to settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For that reason, the official U.S. position has been over the years that settlements are legal, even though successive administrations have criticized them on political grounds. (Only the Carter administration for a short time held that settlements were illegal; this position was overturned by the Reagan administration.)
Then it was Communism. Now it's the fight against Islamic terrorism. Just check the box, and deny the Palestinians basic rights...)....Phil Weiss
Yes, that's right Phil, the Islamists are filling the power vacuum left by the Communists and the Palestinians were, and are, on the side of both.
And like the Communist apologists before them, we now have in the US the Islamo-fascists' "Useful Idiots" - who endlessly parrot the terrorists' refrain that their criminally insane terrorism is all the fault of Israel.
Of course the terrorists hate Jews and Israel - which only proves that there's a strong correlation between being criminally insane and being anti-semitic. But we already knew that - from the Nazis with their genocides, to the Commies with their zionist show trials, to the Islamo-fascists on this very blog incessantly whining about Jews, lobbies, Israel, etc.
So, obviously they would like US policy to be determined by lunatics who ram planes into buildings for the sake of 72 virgins. OK, fair enough. I can see why that's in the Jihadists' interest but it doesn't seem to be in keeping with American interests. I mean where does it end? Should we allow our Civil Rights policy to be determined by the terrorists of the KKK; should our abortion policy be influenced by lunatics who bomb abortion clinics (or the Olympics); should our gay rights policy be changed to appease the terrorists who bomb gay discos?
After all, we can't discriminate, if we prostrate ourselves to appease Muslim terrorists, shouldn't we appease them all?
"No. The relevant clause, Article 49, prohibits the "occupying power" from transferring population into the "occupied territory." Aside from the fact that the territory is not occupied, but disputed, Morris Abrams, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, had pointed out that the clause refers to the forcible transfer of large populations."
Sorry, but nobody outside Israel (and possibly the United States) accepts this intepretation. The serious interpretation of Paragraph 6 of Article 49 (""The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies") is that it applies to forcible and nonforcible transfers, and that it is meant to protect the civilian population of the occupied territory.
One of the many reasons that the US Government supports Israel:
1-NOV-06
"While Intel Corporation scales down its global operation with a major restructuring program, the world's biggest chipmaker still is expecting overall growth at its Israel facilities as it maintains its focus on R&D and looks to new technologies coming out of Israel to spur growth."
Something dipshit is unaware of: the Global Economy, American competitiveness and the fact that the reason the world kisses the Arab's asses is because they have oil.
Starting in 1955 there have been hundreds of UN resolutions condemning the State of Israel for aggression towards her neighbors.
Jews Against the Occupation describe 80 of these complaints. Wikipedia lists 100. The Jewish virtual library lists a couple dozen.
www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/source/UN/USvetoes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_UN_resolutions_concerning_Israel
http://www.jatonyc.org/UNresolutions.html
Government of Israel actions which have been condemned include:
- illegal occupation of Palestine and Syria
- building settlements in Palestine for Israeli Jewish nationals
- numerous military attacks on Syria, Jordan and Lebanon
- violating the rights of civilians during wartime
- building the security wall through Palestinian villages and agricultural lands
Over the years the US alone has acted to support Israel against the international community complaints, and over the years Israel has never complied with any of these UN resolutions. As I was pulling together this material for you, I had an interesting thought about this timeline.
In the 1950's, the 1960's and the 1970's I was not aware of the antagonism and the contempt towards the UN which exists widely in this country today. Today it is commonplace for ordinary Americans, for Congressional Representatives and even for POTUS and his Cabinet to speak disparagingly of the UN. But this is something that appeared only in the past several years, quite a contrast in attitude from the days when Americans held the UN in esteem.
Is it nothing but a coincidence that as the number of unresolved UN resolutions against Israel rises, so also rises a US bias against the legitimacy of the UN?
It does make one wonder -- that is anyone who does not subscribe to Coincidence Theory -- if this could be a carefully manufactured bias, the intention of which is to provide a covering smokescreen for US Government actions in supporting Israeli transgressions of international law, supporting Israel against basically the whole rest of the world outside the United States.
The smokescreen, the smoke is directed toward the American public who, left to their own devices might start to wonder about this. Just a thought.
BTW, Pearlman, I am presuming that you (or maybe one of your manifestations) is the author of the "Dear Friends," letter?
howdy bren! Since you like "pulling things together" i pulled this for you. BTW, if you should ever care to be respected, please do not "pull together" anything from wikipedia.
Current Events
The UN Is for Talk, Not Action
Paul Johnson, 03.14.05, 12:00 AM ET
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The chief accusation against the United Nations used to be: "It's just a debating society." Would that it were! There's something to be said for a global forum in which all peoples can have their say and heads can be counted. Unfortunately the UN has expanded its role and now does everything from "peacekeeping" with multinational troops to administering aid programs and disaster relief.
And it does almost everything badly. It's impossible to point to a major operation the UN has undertaken that's been brought to a successful conclusion. Its failures have nothing to do with inexperience, bad luck or being hurried. I recall the day in 1960 when the UN took charge of the Congo. Under the pressure of "world opinion" the Belgian colonial government had hastily evacuated, triggering massacres. Various European powers were ready to move in to restore order and save lives, but world opinion deemed that only the UN could do the job, as it was the only body with "clean hands."
That was 45 years ago, and the UN has been involved ever since. The fighting has continued--flaring up and dying down, with no end in sight. It's estimated that about 5 million have died. UN secretaries-general have come and gone (one was killed in the Congo), but the UN "mission" grinds on, expensive and totally ineffective.
Astonishing Pattern
The Congo is only one of scores of failed UN missions in Africa alone. These failures don't seem to be taken very seriously by top UN bureaucrats. For example, Kofi Annan's predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who is criticized in the first report of the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, replied: "I am not saying I am not responsible in this case. There are a lot of things that I am responsible for that were ten times worse than this, such as the genocide in Rwanda."
That is, when you think about it carefully, an amazing remark to make. But a lot of curious things are emerging from this investigation. The inquiry is, by UN standards, a thorough one. This is because a first-class, strong personality--Paul Volcker, former head of the U.S. Federal Reserve--is in charge and because theUN investigation is being shadowed by five U.S. congressional inquiries and an investigation by a federal prosecutor in New York.
What has emerged so far confirms my view that the UN is constitutionally incapable of conducting any operation efficiently or honestly. Ideally the UN, foreshadowing a future world government, ought to be run by a global meritocracy--rule by the best. In practice, it is the opposite. Any state that can be legally defined as one can join the UN--it is a club having no rules of probity or morals. To be a member, a state does not have to be a democracy, nor must it accept the rule of law. It can be a hopelessly corrupt tyranny.
The top jobs at the UN tend to go to officials from medium-size or small Third World states, such as Egypt, Ghana or Cyprus, which have provided some of the leaders who feature in the current scandal. These minor states don't usually produce high-quality officials. But when they do, those officials stay at home where they can have successful careers, make a lot of money and exercise real power.
The UN gets the scrapings of the global barrel. The result is failure and graft. UN officials are not answerable to bodies like Congress or the U.K.'s Parliament, which would be sure to track down, expose and punish gross abuses and manifest failures. No senior UN official has ever gone to jail. It's rare for anyone to be sacked or removed. The top brass resist any kind of investigation, on principle. The oil-for-food inquiry is unique in that it has taken place at all and seems to be garnering results.
But will any punishment be meted out? Will any serious reforms be pushed through? Of course not. As for blame, some of it attaches to the major powers, such as the U.S., Britain and France, who have put pressure on UN officials to award contracts to big firms from their respective countries. The diplomats involved argue that such pressure is routine and inevitable. Any system of punishment would have to involve people from the big powers, and there's no chance of that happening. As for reforms, the UN is beyond reform until membership is restricted to civilized powers that practice democracy and the rule of law and hold their rulers responsible for their actions.
Not Alone
Other big international organizations show similar endemic weaknesses. The EU has a corrupt, inefficient and hugely expensive bureaucracy that gobbles up billions of euros that are never properly accounted for. It has successfully resisted any kind of real investigation into its misdeeds. It survives and flourishes in its wickedness because major component states, such as France, Italy and Germany, are themselves corrupt and have no desire to see Brussels become pure and honest. The only way to reduce corruption in Brussels is to give it less to do. The same principle applies to the UN.
I've long advocated that UN headquarters be moved fromNew York and relocated nearer the eye of the world's storms of war, famine, poverty, disease and misgovernment. This would eliminate the playboys and good-timers from UN delegations and the secretariat and attract the honest and serious-minded, perhaps even a few idealists. But until that day comes, we must ensure the UN does not get handed missions it has no chance of carrying out successfully. It can talk shop, yes. No harm in that. But take action, no.
Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author; Lee Kuan Yew, minister mentor of Singapore; and Ernesto Zedillo, director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, former president of Mexico; in addition to Forbes Chairman Caspar W. Weinberger, rotate in writing this column. To see past Current Events columns, visit our Web site at www.forbes.com/currentevents.
roberthume- good summary.
Thank you, wiseking, you made a contribution towards proving my point: invalidation of the organization which embodies international law.