Over the past six decades, Israeli leaders have refined their strategies for taking advantage of their staunchest ally, the United States. Israeli leaders have frequently manipulated and misled American presidents out of a confidence that U.S. politicians deeply fear the political fallout from any public battle with Israel…
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin confirmation hearings on Thursday for Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel. (Rand Paul could be the swing vote). Friedman, who helps finance Israeli settlements, is opposed by a diverse array of groups; some pro-Israel groups say he would be bad for Israel. Some of his Senate supporters received donations from Sheldon Adelson…
Americans dodged a bullet when neocon Abrams was denied. He was a founding co-signer of PNAC, led the charge to invade Iraq after calling for “regime change,” and has endorsed military interventions in Libya, Syria, and as Iran. He called Chuck Hagel an “anti-Semite” because Hagel had criticized Israel. Gina Haspel, new CIA Deputy Director, was reportedly involved in the torture programs. In 2005 she ordered the destruction of the video tapes made of the interrogations…
With a single exception, all the countries were targeted for attack in 2001, with similar plans in 1996, 1991, 1982, and the 1950s. The fact is that Trump’s action continues policies influenced by people working on behalf of a foreign country, whose goal has been to destabilize and reshape an entire region. The result has been devastating wars, massive refugee movement that is uprooting entire peoples and transforming parts of Europe, desperate terrorism, and now the horror that is ISIS. If this decades-long effort is not halted, it will increasingly devastate the region, our country, and the world…
Like most successful politicians, Lederman worked to develop friendly relationships with voters. JTA reports that these are useful in promoting Israel: “Such first-name-basis relationships in a state with only 800,000 people help Lederman advance a pro-Israel agenda, one that he prominently displays on his website’s home page, where he touts his leadership on the Iran sanctions legislation as well as a pro-Israel resolution in the wake of Israel’s 2008-2009 Gaza military campaign…”
Israeli forces “arrested” an estimated 590 Palestinians in January, including 128 Palestinian children, 14 women, a journalist, and a Palestinian parliament member. In total, there are now 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. (These “arrests” are different than what most Americans understand the term to mean. Those doing the “arresting” are not the society’s police force enforcing the population’s laws. The “arrests” are perpetrated by Israeli forces occupying Palestinian land.)
Intensified Israeli attacks against Gaza are reminiscent of the leadup to its previous wide-scale invasions of Gaza, most recently “Operation Protective Edge.” Human rights groups calls on the interntional community to prevent it.
Sixteen years ago today, in the midst of the Second Intifada, Alison Weir set off to Palestine as an independent reporter, bent on seeing for herself the reality behind the news headlines that depicted Israel under storm by hostile Arabs. She had never visited Israel or Palestine and was completely new to understanding the so-called “Mideast Conflict.”…
Chaim Levinson reports in Ha’aretz that there is a “conspiracy of silence” about Israeli torture. The fact that Israel tortures prisoners has been exposed many times. In 1977 the London Sunday Times described it; award winning journalist and author Grace Halsell described it in her 1081 book Journey to Jerusalem and an article; Israeli torture of American…
During Israel’s July-August, 2014 onslaught against Gaza, members of Congress eagerly supported Israel’s “right” to slaughter a couple of thousand Palestinians and level much of Gaza’s infrastructure in the name of “self-defense.” At least 8 bills and resolutions were introduced, and no fewer 7 letters were sent to President Barack Obama or U.N. officials. The Washington Report reported the details in the article originally published in fall 2014…