Al Jazeera highlights If Americans Knew and others exposing Israeli terrorism

American journalist Alison Weir is the founder of the website and organization If Americans Knew. (photo)

This writer says that Alison and If Americans Knew represent a different kind of Americans – Americans against Zionism, tyranny, corruption and falsehood, who embrace the rights of peoples and humanity everywhere. They broke free from lies and deception, and took it upon themselves to help their fellow citizens break free as well…

by Karim Yahya, reposted from Al Jazeera Arabic (auto-generated translation)

In his expected speech before the US Congress at the end of this month, July 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu seeks to erase the stigma of being a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, and to enhance the influence of Tel Aviv and Zionism in the domestic policies of the United States, after the wheel turned towards the presidential elections next November.

Days ago, sources told the press in Washington and Tel Aviv, at the conclusion of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s visit to the United States, that the volume of American military aid to the Israeli army during its war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, amounted to $6.5 billion, with additional new arms requests being met to continue the war.

But there is an America and a different America at war. The intensity of this conflict over Gaza and Palestine in general is reflected in a report by the British Guardian on June 24, entitled “Israeli documents reveal wide-ranging government efforts to shape US discourse on Gaza.”

The report, based on Knesset minutes and the Israeli “state” budget, reveals that the Netanyahu government has pumped some $8.2 million in emergency funds into American Zionist lobby groups and organizations, with the aim of countering the awareness movement and protests among university students and the general public in the United States in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and for new legislation that expands the concept of “anti-Semitism” to suppress criticism of Israeli governments and Zionist practices and to criminalize boycotts.

The British newspaper reported, after investigation and verification, that the money that flowed from Israel in this manner violates US laws; as it was done without transparency, and without informing the Ministry of Justice of foreign funding to influence political decision-making, in addition to violating freedom of expression and its principles stipulated in the US Constitution and laws.

The book/testimony rich in information and facts by the American Republican Representative Paul Findley about the role of the Zionist lobby in influencing decision-making in his country was of great importance when it was published in 1985; because it revealed the mechanisms of influence and pressure. Therefore, before the end of the year, Beirut printing presses rushed to publish an Arabic translation of it under the title: “Who Dares to Speak?”

At that time, this book enriched our discussion about American-Israeli relations, and with it efforts to answer the question: Who leads whom: America or Israel? Or is the relationship interactive in both directions?

Findley’s book came with talk about the beginning of the “era of Zionist hegemony” over the region after Sadat’s “Camp David,” the invasion of Beirut, and the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon. As well as what immediately preceded it of the decline in the political weight of Arab oil in favor of the Palestinian cause in the United States and Europe, after its rise with the decision to reduce production and boycott in the October 1973 war.

In the battlefield of awareness regarding the Palestinian cause and all the issues and developments of the peoples of the region, the importance of the progressive printed periodicals critical of Zionism that used to come to us from the United States cannot be denied, despite their elitism and limited distribution. The Washington Report, Merip, and The New Yorker are at the forefront of these. It is now possible to follow them and others through their websites, which are rich in analysis.

Since the October 7 event, other websites of independent American organizations and newspapers have emerged on the Internet, fighting this new round of this awareness battle with courage and professionalism, and relying on accurate and correct information. They have mobilized to reveal to the American citizen the delusions of politicians and the interests of the forces of “business,” the arms industry and trade, and the “media” regarding what is happening in occupied Palestine, the foundations of the conflict, and its latest developments. This time, the focus is on addressing a larger American audience based on its interests and rights, and what it has been told about “the founding American democratic values and their ethics.”

As an example, we stop at the organization “If Americans Knew” and its website. This is because it focuses on providing a documented, accurate, simplified and comparative information service to define the facts of our Palestinian cause and the conflict with Zionism and Israel. It also explains the burdens that the American citizen is charged as a result of supporting this killing, destruction and insane displacement in our region since the arrival of Zionism. This is important in addressing its society.

In the latest informational coverage at “If Americans Knew” about the size of military aid to the Israeli killing and destruction machine and its burdens on the American taxpayer citizen, it becomes clear that American administrations, with the blessing of Congress, have granted Tel Aviv (gangs of a state) about 260 billion dollars since 1946. Taking inflation and currency changes into account, the amount is currently estimated at about 320 billion.

“If the Americans knew,” she says, the average American taxpayer bears at least $10.5 million per day. But this burden is also compounded by the fact that Israel, always the first country on the US aid list, is unique in receiving the money in one lump sum at the beginning of the fiscal year, rather than in quarterly installments like other countries that follow it on the aid list. This means that US administrations borrow this money from banks and pay interest on it throughout the year, which increases the burden on taxpayers by about $100 million over the announced figures.

Among the burdens and costs that cannot be calculated and limited in dollars, according to the organization’s website, is that Washington is putting Americans in a state of war and hostility with the victims of Zionism in the Middle East, by insisting on siding diplomatically, economically, militarily and strategically with Israel and its aggression, terrorism and racial discrimination.

This contradicts and threatens American national interests. In addition to these damages, there is the violation of American laws, principles and values themselves, as well as international charters and treaties, and its negative impact on the mental image of the United States in the world.

The founder of this organization and its website, journalist and activist Alison Weir, deserves credit for her courage, efforts and perseverance in exposing and challenging bias towards Zionist Israeli terrorism. She is not afraid to announce the organizations and individuals who support Zionism day after day, and provides documented statistics and facts, old and new, about the Palestinian cause, including the numbers of victims killed, wounded and prisoners detained, and comparing them to Israeli losses.

To her and her organization goes back the initiative to publish an advertisement in the New York Times on December 12, 2012, explaining with geographical maps: How did the Palestinian people lose their homeland between 1946 and 2010?

This brave American, along with her organization’s working group and the National Interest coalition she chairs, has stood firm in the face of campaigns targeting her since she broke free from lies and deception, discovered her humanity, and took it upon herself to help her fellow citizens break free as well.

The turning point came when she left a local newspaper in California that she was editor-in-chief of and toured the West Bank in 2001 during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and saw with her own eyes what the media of money and big business concealed and distorted, even though in her younger years she had a glimpse of the struggles of free Americans with the “civil rights movement.”

This is what prompts us to think about this Arab perspective, which still sees in general terms that “all Americans” are the same, and that they deserve to be shown hostility or submission, or a combination of the two, and turns a blind eye to another America against Zionism, tyranny, corruption and falsehood, and with the rights of peoples and humanity everywhere.

Rather, in a way that we [in the Middle East] may not find among us, and among our people and families sometimes.

Karim Yahya is an Egyptian writer and journalist.

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