Evidence Emerging Of Cheney-Led Smear Campaign Against Pelosi Over Syria Trip

Before Nancy Pelosi left Israel to travel to Syria earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokeswoman Miri Eisin said “Pelosi is conveying that Israel is willing to talk if they (Syria) would openly take steps to stop supporting terrorism.” Pelosi delivered as requested, and this week received a thank you call from Olmert. So why then did the Israeli Prime Minister originally issue a statement of “clarification” about Pelosi’s message which became the basis for right-wing attacks against her?

The evidence of White House involvement behind the Israeli Prime Minister’s statement has been growing this past week. Middle East analysts have suggested Bush deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams — a close ally of Dick Cheney — may have been coordinating the attempts to undermine Pelosi’s trip. “‘It’s obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker’s trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip,’ said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. ‘I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip.’” ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:15 PM

Soros adds voice to debate over Israel lobby | By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent | April 15, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate.

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community.

"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.

AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them. Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech. ...
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Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.

"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.

No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.

Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.
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Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.
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In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."
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In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.

"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."
- posted by Editor @ 11:55 AM

11/04/2007 | Closed 1967 Senate protocols reveal bids to pressure Israel | By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Hundreds of pages released this week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee contain protocols of closed committee hearings from the seminal year of 1967, including one in which former Senator William J. Fulbright is quoted as saying, "The trouble is they [the Israel lobby] think they have control of the Senate and they can do as they please."

During the hearing in question - in June 1967 - the senators of the prestigious committee grilled then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk over the meaning of the looming crisis days before the Six-Day War, and the meaning of Israel's remarkable victory during the war.

Former Senator Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa suggested revoking tax deductible contributions of the United Jewish Appeal as an effort to put pressure on Israel, to which Fulbright responded, "The trouble is they think they have control of the Senate and they can do as they please."

When asked by former Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri to clarify his statement, Fulbright said, "I said they know they have control of the Senate politically, and therefore whatever the Secretary tells them, they can laugh at him. They say, 'Yes, but you don't control the Senate.'" ...
- posted by Editor @ 5:07 PM

Lantos: White House Pressured Olmert to Deny He Gave Pelosi Peace Message for AssadBy richards1052 | bio | [cross posted to Tikun Olam]

Josh Marshall reports something I surmised almost from the beginning of the flap over whether or not Nancy Pelosi carried a message from Israel to Syria saying the former wanted peace talks with the latter. As soon as Pelosi made the diplomatic demarche public, Olmert denied it had ever existed. But no less an Israel hawk than Tom Lantos not only confirms that Pelosi delivered exactly the message conveyed to her by Olmert in Jerusalem, he also lays blame for the Olmert denial squarely at the feet of the White House. Marshall quotes Rom Kampeas at JTA:

Lantos suggested there was pressure from the White House.

"It's obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker's trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip," said Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. "I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip."

The White House had no comment on the allegations by Lantos that it pressured Olmert to offer a clarification.

Such backdoor statecraft between the White House and Olmert would not be unprecedented.

Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked Olmert into a 48-hour cease-fire during the war with Hezbollah to allow humanitarian relief, but within hours Israeli planes were bombing again, to Rice's surprise and anger. Olmert had received a call, apparently from Cheney's office, telling him to ignore Rice.

Olmert's message seemed calibrated to cast Pelosi as a naive novice.

I was never aware of the story of Cheney's sabotage of Rice's ceasefire proposal. That's sure an eye-opener.

And I have nothing but disdain for all the dopey CNN reporters, and Washington Post and WSJ editorial writers who accept at face value that it was Pelosi who had the rug pulled out from under her in Damascus; that she somehow overplayed her hand in telling the world that Israel wanted peace with Syria. If she did fall down (and I don't even accept this premise) it's because Ehud Olmert set the rug on the floor and Dick Cheney yanked it at the proper moment. ...
- posted by Editor @ 1:30 PM

Zionism vs. Anti-Zionism: Dershowitz Tries To Get Finklestein Fired | Thursday, April 5, 2007

Harvard Law Professor Works to Disrupt Tenure Bid of Longtime Nemesis at DePaul U.

The highly public feud between Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University and Harvard Law School's Alan M. Dershowitz has taken an unusual procedural twist, with Mr. Dershowitz attempting to weigh in on Mr. Finkelstein's bid for tenure at DePaul.
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The College Personnel Committee subsequently voted 5 to 0 in favor of tenure for Mr. Finkelstein. But Charles S. Suchar, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, shot down the recommendation in a March 22, 2007, memo, a copy of which was also obtained by The Chronicle.

In language similar to that used by Mr. Dershowitz, the dean wrote, "I find the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views."

Because the process is not yet complete, the DePaul administration has not made a public statement about Mr. Finkelstein's case.

"No comment at this time," Mr. Suchar wrote in an e-mail message. "The promotion and tenure review process is still under way, and final decisions are not expected until mid- to late May." The final decision on whether Mr. Finkelstein receives tenure rests with the provost and president of the university. ...
- posted by Editor @ 1:49 PM

02/04/2007 | Fire destroys Neturei Karta synagogue, rabbi's residence in NY | By The Associated Press

A fire deemed suspicious destroyed a New York suburban synagogue of an
anti-Zionist Jewish group heavily criticized for attending a conference last year where participants debated whether the Holocaust occurred.

No one was injured in Sunday night's fire in the town of Monsey. A senior Neturei Karta rabbi and his family, who lived on the top floor of the three-story structure, were not home.

"It may in the future be found to be accidental, but at this time we're treating it as a suspicious fire and we're investigating it as such," said Sgt. Daniel Hyman of the Ramapo Police Department, which provides services to Monsey, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of New York City.

The Neturei Karta has been the target of threats in the recent past because of their involvement in the anti-Zionism movement. The group has been widely criticized by other Jewish groups.

"Anybody who would like to reveal to the world their opposition to this political, national movement of Zionism is attacked," said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the Neturei Karta. ...
- posted by Editor @ 4:42 PM