Bravo to Philip Klein for giving General David Petraeus the opportunity to clarify the following: one, he never requested that the West Bank and Gaza be added to his remit as Commander of CENTCOM, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq. Two, the perceived pro-Israel slant of US Middle East policy is just one of many strategic factors, and not the only one, which he has to take into consideration (the other factors include, Petraeus said, “a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist. There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place.”) Three, that he never made the statement, widely attributed to him, that US policy endangers the lives of American soldiers under his command (“There is no mention of lives anywhere in there. I actually reread the statement. It doesn’t say that at all.”)
Archive for the 'Israel Lobby' Category
Crossposted at Harry’s Place.
To anyone who knows the medium of television, the statement that a news program is probably the last place to have a serious discussion about a serious matter is hardly a revelation. The allotted timeframe, generally three or four minutes, precludes any in-depth analysis. Discussants are acutely aware that they have to communicate in soundbites, so rather than engaging with each other, they artfully twist the presenter’s questions into answers that emphasize the talking points they arrived at the studio with. That’s how it’s always been.
This is a crosspost by Mark Gardner of the CST blog.
On 4th December, the Guardian published an immediate and complete apology for a letter that had appeared upon its letters page the previous day. CST covered the story, here and here. (The letter, upon close scrutiny, advocated Holocaust Denial. A ‘Google’ search of the author showed that whilst he was not well known, he did have ‘previous’ in this regard.)
Continue reading ‘Financial Times Perpetuates “Jewish Power” Myth’
This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.
Some of the most interesting material on the controversy about J-Street that has developed in the run-up to the organization’s currently ongoing conference was provided by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently published an interview with J-Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami.
Continue reading ‘How to Make Life Easy for J-Street’s Detractors’
Over at the CST blog, eagle-eyed Dave Rich observes a particularly well-known habitué of Afghan caves recommending - eight years after the slaughter of 9/11 - that Americans read the works of Messrs. Mearsheimer and Walt. Writes Dave: “[T]hey cannot claim to be completely surprised that the leader of al-Qaeda has cited their book in support of his cause; after all, they cited him first, as evidence that the activities of the Israel Lobby were damaging American interests (‘There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians.’)”
This is a cross-post by Mark Gardner from the new - and hugely welcome - blog of the Community Security Trust in the UK. While you’re there, see also Dave Rich’s inaugural post. “This blog will try to shed some light on the nature of contemporary antisemitism, but also on the good work being done to combat it,” he says.
An article in today’s Independent by the paper’s Washington correspondent, David Usborne, contains a stunning example of the conflation of Jews with Israel.
This is a guest post by Edward P. Joseph. A leading commentator on international affairs, Joseph is the author of the essay The Open Society and Its Critics: Minorities and Political Lobbying in the United States, a critique of the “Israel Lobby” thesis, published on Z Word in February 2008.
Poor David Broder. He - and so many others - have missed the point of the whole Charles Freeman flap. The point is not Freeman’s character or his many capabilities or even whether or not Freeman got a “fair hearing.” The harsh truth is that nothing in our system guarantees potential appointees to high office a “fair hearing.”
Continue reading ‘Chas Freeman: Remember the US Constitution’
Of all the commentaries on the Chas Freeman affair, David Rothkopf on Foreign Policy offers one of the more insightful takes, not least because of his devastating assault on “Israel Lobby” co-author Stephen Walt’s tired, whiny conspiracy theories.
Yet more evidence of the overlap, when it comes to Israel, between the unreconstructed left and America-first realists comes in the shape of this piece by Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation.
Continue reading ‘Chas Freeman: The New Hero of the Resistance’
There’s a sullenness about the current cover of The American Conservative. During a week in which the United States has witnessed the inauguration of its first black President, the house journal of reactionary isolationism ignores that milestone and instead rails against what it regards as Israel’s self-defeating iniquities in Gaza. Leading the pack of the disaffected is John Mearsheimer, co-author of “The Israel Lobby.”
