MSM Exposes The Lobby – Moon of Alabama

January 20, 2008

MSM Exposes The Lobby

This WaPo piece about the rightwing Freedom’s Watch could likely not have been published, if not for Walt/Mearsheimer’s work about the Israel Lobby. That book revealed a can of worms and now more and more people dare to peak inside.

Freedom’s Watch will have money — a lot of money. While initial reports suggested a budget of $200 million, people who have talked to the group in recent weeks say the figure is closer to $250 million, more than double the amount spent by the largest independent liberal groups in the 2004 election cycle.
…
The organization was conceived at a Florida meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition last spring with the initial aim of defending Bush’s policies in Iraq and Iran. But like its inspiration and antagonist, it has moved on.

The aggressively negative anti-illegal-immigration ads that ran during the Ohio special election race strayed far from Middle East policy, but the ad campaign — like the group itself — was bankrolled largely by Sheldon G. Adelson, a Las Vegas casino executive who last year pledged an unprecedented $200 million to Jewish and Israeli causes.

…
As an appetizer, Freedom’s Watch took out full-page ads last fall in the local newspapers of seven freshman House Democrats from rural districts, targeting their antiwar votes and linking them to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Many in Freedom Watch’s donor base — including Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and Sembler, the strip-mall magnate from St. Petersburg, Fla. — have always been strong supporters of Israel. The group’s initial ad blitz in defense of Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq came naturally out of those interests. [emphasis added]

Expressed shorter: War on Iraq and Iran is naturally in Israel’s interests and pressure for those wars is financed and organized by very rich U.S. Zionists.

Such was obvious to many for years but hardly ever published in mainstream media.

But the U.S. people are for now somewhat done with further wars in Israel’s interest and the result of Freedom’s Watch millions will be a surge in anti-semitism.

In who’s interest is that?

Posted by b on January 20, 2008 at 14:36 UTC | Permalink

Comments

wow, amazing. even if it took them half the article to mention who was behind the money.

Posted by: annie | Jan 20 2008 17:15 utc | 1

Aww. On behalf of the American people, you’re very welcome.
Jan 10, 2008 0:23 | Updated Jan 10, 2008 10:35
Chief rabbi thanks Bush for ‘war against Iraq‘
By MATTHEW WAGNER

During a short verbal exchange Wednesday at the Ben-Gurion Airport Terminal, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked President George W. Bush for the US’s military intervention in Iraq.
“I want to thank you for your support of Israel and in particular for waging a war against Iraq,” Metzger told Bush, according to the chief rabbi’s spokesman.
Bush reportedly answered that the chief rabbi’s words “warmed his heart.”

The warm blood spilled to keep the oil off the market while opportunistically using Israel to make me and my Saudi buddies rich, that is, Bush said, off the record.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 20 2008 18:59 utc | 2

Anti-Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism. There are certainly interested parties try to portray it that way, just as those who claim that being anti-Islamist means automatically being anti-Islam.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 20 2008 19:20 utc | 3

There are certainly interested parties with loads of cash who bribe our politicians to try to portray it that way…
There fixed that for ya…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 20 2008 19:46 utc | 4

So, rich jews should not try to go take oil because they might make someone feel bad about their religion? Hmm, I think they’ll risk it. They and the oilmen of houston and the holes at the pentagon and those wailing on wall street are willing to trade any amount of blood for it; insane with greed and power, how could a world religion’s reputation means jack sh** to them?
🙂

Posted by: bellgong | Jan 20 2008 21:07 utc | 5

Anti-Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism.
Of course it is not. That is a preposterous assertion used to silence critics. Zionism is an ideology that promotes the exclusive granting of a country to people of one religion at the expense of the complete destruction of another people who have been living there for centuries and happen not to be Jewish. Opposing that philosophy on moral or any other grounds does not by definition mean you hate Jews. It more likely means you oppose injustice, oppression, and violence. In fact, it might very arguably mean you are more deeply concerned for the long-term welfare of the Jewish people than someone who supports Zionism, because Zionism by definition requires the Jews to become oppressors. The Founding Fathers of Zionism knew this very clearly and made no bones about it; it was a cost they were happily ready to bear. We see the results of that today with the tragically rampant entrenchment of racism in Israeli society and the flagrant violations of human rights.
Would it be correct, for example, to assert that anti-Nazism was equivalent to “anti-Germanism,” if there were such a term? Of course not. Or that anti-Communism was equivalent to hating Russians? Or for that matter, that being opposed to democracy equated to hating all Americans, or being against capitalism to hating all Westerners? Of course not.
The same holds for opposition to Israel. Being against a country’s government’s policies because they are harmful and morally wrong does not by any stretch of the imagination automatically conflate to being against its people just by virtue of their identity.
These are canards meant to smear and intimidate potential critics into silence. If you think about it, such assertions are fairly narcissistic, made as if the ONLY ones involved in one’s arriving at an anti-Zionist outlook are Jews — as if there are no “others” who might factor into one’s moral calculus as well; they simply don’t exist. I’m not sure how to express this clearly. The flip side of this is that in the eyes of those types who level such charges, expressing any concern for Palestinians must equate to anti-Semitism. Allowing Palestinians any right to humanity somehow does the same. It’s the reason why, for example, art exhibits of photos of Palestinian children suffering can sometimes get ferociously targeted as anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
In the last analysis, it’s tragic. Hopefully one day we will rise above these types of arguments and move on. It does seem as if they are rather outliving their usefulness, finally.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 20 2008 21:10 utc | 6

There are many Jews who are anti-Zionists, several of whom have been friends of mine over the years. How do the ultra-zionist respond to their betheren? Read and weep.
Link to Burning of Anti-Zionist Synagogue

Posted by: Diogenes | Jan 20 2008 21:49 utc | 7

Regime change -> Israel

Posted by: IntelVet | Jan 20 2008 22:47 utc | 8

well, i for one agree w/bernhard. whether it is fair or not there will be a backlash and there will be many ignorant people who will slander (or worse) jews as a result of these radical rightwingers and their insane policies. how could it be any other way? look at the global anti americanism fermented as a result of our own extremists and their extreme policies. even tho, as mentioned in uncle’s @2 post, a vast majority of american jews are as anti war as the rest of us, 70%, about the same as the national average.
i agree w/intel. regime change. i think we should have laws about foreign countries lobbying our politicians. i’m sick of funding crimes against humanity.

Posted by: annie | Jan 21 2008 4:31 utc | 9

Jim Lobe with some concerns about the WaPo piece:

the assertion that the Freedom’s Watch’s donor base, including Adelson and Sembler, are “strong supporters of Israel.” I don’t doubt that the group’s donors consider themselves “strong supporters of Israel”, but what precisely is meant by that? If the phrase means supporters of the government of Israel, then it is inaccurate, because the positions of Adelson and other Watch donors on such key questions as Jerusalem, the West Bank — indeed, any territorial compromise — even Annapolis and a two-state solution, are well to the right of the current Israeli government.
…
This kind of journalistic shorthand — associating neo-conservatives and their organizations like the RJC and Freedom’s Watch — with being ‘’pro-Israel’’ or “strong supporters of Israel” — is unfortunately pervasive in the mainstream media. It is not only inaccurate; it is also dangerous. It implies that neo-conservatives have Israel’s best interests at heart, which, as in the case of the Iraq war (and last summer’s conflict with Hezbollah) and in so many other instances, is demonstrably not the case. It also puts those individuals or organizations — particularly in the American Jewish community — that are very concerned about Israel but that believe that the neo-conservatives have actually undermined the country’s security in a kind of political limbo. After all, if Adelson, Freedom’s Watch, and the RJC are considered “pro-Israel” or “strong supporters of Israel,” what does that make Americans for Peace Now or the Israel Policy Forum, both of which consider themselves “pro-Israel” and “strong supporters of Israel” but also believe, contrary to hard-line neo-conservatives, that a two-state solution with major territorial compromises that include East Jerusalem are the only way to ensure Israel’s security and long-term survival?
This kind of lazy journalistic labeling has very real and very unfortunate political consequences.

Posted by: b | Jan 21 2008 6:39 utc | 10

Was just reading a Persian scholar’s description of a typical Tehran private party,
the seven course meals, the snacks, sweet desserts, appertifs, home made wine
and strong non-industrial vodka. It suddenly occurred to me how horrible cynical
the overlordian tsarist evil BushCo’s Neo-Zionist Fascist regime has treated US,
spewing their round-the-corners-of-the-square lies, telling US, with the greatest
external foreign debt of any country in the world, about Iran … with the lowest.
Where else in the world can a government charter a bank that charges no usury?
Then remembered the Village, the heat of the ’60’s, the parties, the seven courses,
the home made wine, the goat milk ice cream, free love, puna bud, and talk stories,
way before “Reagan’s Revolution” made Ghorbanifar and the CIA arbiters of our fate,
and plunged US into the first S&L of a growing, cascading death-spiral of mil.cons,
cocaine and contras, as BushCo emerged, black snake wrapped around a twin-eagled
staff, then AIPAC, PNAC, and now AMPAC, the Treasury looted, all our banks emptied.
Pray that we don’t wake up with Saudi dog collars on…

Posted by: b #347 | Jan 21 2008 7:06 utc | 11

I am also anti-clerical, but not anti-religious. In fact, if I were at heart opposed to religion and faith, I would support a strong institutionalized, tax-supported church, as it teaches people that a church can exist without the people’s direct involvement.
And yes, if I were at heat a cynical anti-Semite, I might well support Zionism, since it is one of the root causes of the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 21 2008 8:17 utc | 12

When Bush was on his jaunt through the Muddled East, I noted that he referred to Israel as our “most important ally”
But does the US have an actual ratified treaty of alliance with the Israel? I know they get guns and stuff and money to buy them — but is there an actual treaty, like NATO? There may be, but all I have been able to find is something called Memorandoms of Understanding
Anyway, here is an interesting tidbit from that link:

There are other issues affecting the public discourse on U.S.-Israel defense ties. Much of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship is classified, particularly in the area of intelligence sharing. There are two direct consequences from this situation. First, most aspects of U.S.-Israel defense ties are decided on the basis of the professional security considerations of those involved. Lobbying efforts in Congress cannot force a U.S. security agency to work with Israel.
Second, because many elements of the relationship are kept secret, it is difficult for academics, commentators, and pundits to provide a thorough net assessment of the true value of U.S.-Israel ties. Thus, Israel is left working shoulder-to-shoulder with the U.S., and finds itself presented by outside commentators as a worthless ally whose status is only sustained by a domestic lobby. Nonetheless, what has come out about the U.S.-Israel security relationship certainly makes the recent analysis of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer extremely suspect.

(my emphasis)
Their point is, there are secret agreements and since they are secret we can’t pass judgement — sigh…

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 21 2008 19:45 utc | 13

To answer the question who would benefit from renewed anti-semitism: the Zionists.
Already the “genius” Theo Herzl wrote in his diary that he would work to foment antisemitism everywhere because it enhances the jewish character. This seems to be true to this day, for example thinking of Ariel Sharons infamous lie about a “wave of antisemitism” in France.

Posted by: antonymous | Jan 22 2008 14:39 utc | 14

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