Some choice quotes:

“The Palestinians are under occupation because that is what they’ve chosen”

“Israel has given a lot to the Pakistanis”

“What you call Palestinians, we call terrorists”

“There is no siege on Gaza, they’re building 5 star diamond hotels there”

“I have an Arab friend on Facebook! His name is AKHMAD”

“There was 9% economic growth in the West Bank last year, you don’t hear about THAT on the news”

That last one was a Salam Fayyad talking point. Like all Salam Fayyad talking points, its endlessly pushed by Zionists and not many others.

Obama spoke at AIPAC's 2011 policy conference

Great analysis and insight from Monadel Herzallah, Sara Kershnar, Max Ajl, and Kristin Szremski. Article originally found on the Electronic Intifada.

This week, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobby organization in the United States, is holding its annual policy conference in Washington DC.

The roster of speakers — from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to Christian Right paragon Ralph Reed, President Barack Obama and several members of Congress — is clear evidence that the relationship between and interests shared by AIPAC, the religious right and the US government continue unabashed and unchallenged.

For too long this stronghold of the US-Israel alliance has rolled forward unimpeded, funding, defending and capitalizing on Israeli policies and the Israeli settler-colonial enterprise in Palestine.

Challenging AIPAC is part of our larger effort to stop the United States’ financial and military support for, corporate investment in and political coverage for Israel. If the goal is to expose and ultimately restrain the role that Israel plays in US foreign policy, focusing exclusively on AIPAC is an insufficient project.

The $60-million-per-year organization certainly represents a lot of financial clout in favor of what are called “Israeli interests.” But it is not AIPAC alone that secures more than $3 billion a year in unconditional military aid and an additional $2.5 billion in other forms of aid and loan guarantees for the State of Israel.

AIPAC and “US interests”

We must look carefully at whose interests in the United States are served by the US-Israel alliance and whose interests are harmed. For only then can we develop an effective strategy to successfully expose and challenge the network of Zionist organizations, the ultra-right wing and religious right, American corporations and the military and foreign policy interests that are served by this alliance.

Moreover, with an understanding that the interests of the vast majority of people and communities in the United States are not served but are, in fact, harmed by this alliance, we can build the movement necessary to form this successful strategy.

Casting AIPAC as a foreign contaminant poisoning US foreign policy and interests is inaccurate. The global power of the American military, government and corporations largely relies on exporting weapons to the Middle East, extracting profits from elevated gas prices, and opening doors for US trade and multi-national corporate profit.

The US strategy for maintaining control in the region has included US military aggression and occupation of countries whose governments challenge American interests; the creation of dependency on US aid and the economic and political alliances with repressive regimes; and building and protecting Israel’s ability to act as a military force to defend these interests.

In turn, Israel has become one of the world’s most powerful militaries, which it uses not only to maintain the occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands, but also as a threat against its neighbors. As important, it enjoys uncritical support from the US government and its representatives in the United Nations.

US, Israel and the religious right

This mutually beneficial relationship then capitalizes on the interests of the conservative religious right. An extreme but significant and well-funded fundamentalist network supports Israel as part of its belief that this will herald the return of Christ.

One of these groups is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a Chicago-based group that donated as much as $70 million to Israel in 2009 alone, according to published reports.

The US-Israel alliance serves powerful interests and therefore AIPAC and the network of Zionist organizations have powerful allies. But these interests serve a small percentage of the people and communities in the US who are paying the taxes to maintain that alliance. Moreover, the parallel domestic policies in place that protect the interests of this alliance are damaging and repressive to the majority of people in the US.

The domestic practices funded and mobilized by a range of Zionist organizations, including but not limited to AIPAC, include anti-Arab and Islamophobic attacks and unconstitutional prosecution of communities and organizations; anti-immigrant policies and militarized borders; FBI raids and grand jury investigations and indictments; and increased surveillance and policing of communities of color in the United States.

In addition to AIPAC, many right-wing Zionist organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), have a direct interest in fomenting Islamophobia and anti-Arab bigotry in the United States to create ideological cover for American and Israeli militarism and occupation in Muslim and Arab countries.

The PATRIOT Act, related anti-immigrant policies, and the ability to implement unconstitutional FBI raids and grand jury investigations and indictments come directly out of anti-terrorist laws that were instituted in the 1980s.

Now, as then, Zionist think tanks and institutions, such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the US government partner in drafting and passing this legislation and play a role in the unconstitutional surveillance of individuals, communities and human rights, anti-war, international solidarity and community-based organizations.

A similar situation was uncovered in 1993, when federal agents discovered the California offices of the ADL held thousands personal and confidential files — many obtained illegally from law enforcement officers — on more than 1,300 private individuals and organizations. The ADL admitted to selling some of this illegally-obtained information on anti-apartheid activists to the apartheid South African government.

Security Solutions International, a US-based private security firm which advises the Department of Homeland Security, has a reputation for hiring Israeli military veterans. They have advised over 700 law enforcement agencies since 2004. Their “curriculum” includes a good deal on the threat posed by radical Islam.

The Israeli military itself is contracted by numerous US police forces across the country and by the Coast Guard for training in domestic “population control.” The racialized approach to security that Israeli military personnel have been indoctrinated with translates into dehumanizing people of color here in the US.

More generally, the billions of dollars spent on Israel are taken from desperately needed health care, the revival of our faltering public education system, housing and employment programs, to name a few. These are as central to security for the people of the US as is a shift in our foreign policy.

Meanwhile, AIPAC, like other Zionist institutions, is attempting to enlist communities of color to defend its agenda. A recent example involves a letter from a black academic excellence student group, the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG), criticizing campus organizing against Israeli apartheid for “appropriating” the history of the South African anti-apartheid struggle.

VLG leadership was honored at an annual AIPAC banquet following a Zionist-funded trip to Israel. In carrying out AIPAC’s agenda, VLG not only betrays the Palestinian and popular movements for self-determination, democracy and rights and the history of the South African anti-apartheid struggle and South African solidarity with Palestine, but also the interests of the vast majority of people in the communities of color they claim to speak for and serve.

Thus, an effort to truly confront and ultimately strip the power of the pro-Israel lobby must become part of a broad, grassroots, mass movement. This movement must based on the interests shared by the many communities impacted by the devastation and repression caused by the alliance between Israel, Zionist organizations in the US, the US military, corporations and the fundamentalist religious and conservative right.

Challenging business-as-usual in Washington

As has been proven time and again, communities in the US or elsewhere will never be secure with a US foreign and domestic policy driven by the interests of its military, military profiteering, war and occupation, and multi-national corporations.

Whether in the Middle East, Central and South America or at the US-Mexico border, American policy will not produce just outcomes until it is made to do so. To that end, we do not think our efforts should be pitched to cajoling domestic elites into adopting a just-slightly more sane policy in the Middle East. If they do so, and this gives the Palestinian people a bit more breathing room, that is all to the good.

But we must look to further horizons. Rather than pitching Palestinian emancipation as amenable to imperial US national interests, activists and community organizers must take our role seriously and recognize that there is an inherent problem with negotiating Palestinian rights in Washington.

We must follow the lead of the Palestinian movement domestically and in Palestine, and heed the logic of the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions — movement to movement, person to person, local government to regional government to national government.

It is this work that will make the costs of continuing the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel, and Washington’s support of dictatorships blighting the Middle East, higher than the costs of giving them up.

We have much work ahead, but writing from the US, we take tremendous inspiration from movements across the Middle East. While still in flux, in some cases they have successfully taken down US-supported dictators.

The lesson is clear: only a powerful grassroots movement rooted in community and transformative in its goals and organizing will bring Israel and its Zionist guardians in the US and US imperialism to its knees.

Monadel Herzallah is a labor organizer and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the US Palestinian Community Network.

Sara Kershnar is an international organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

Kristin Szremski is an independent journalist and currently the director of media and communications for the American Muslims for Palestine.

One could be forgiven for thinking that the last three letters of AIPAC stand for “political action committee.” But since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee does not itself make campaign contributions to political candidates, technically it is not a PAC.  Curiously, however, the 30-odd “unaffiliated” pro-Israel PACs, most with deceptively innocuous names, all seem to give to the same candidates—almost as if there were a guiding intelligence behind their contributions. In the eyes of the Federal Election Commission, AIPAC is a “membership organization” rather than a political committee. This means that, unlike actual PACs, AIPAC is not required to file public reports on its income and expenditures.

Not for nothing, however, did Fortune magazine once name it the second most powerful lobby in Washington. So it’s easy to understand why, like a night flower that blooms in the dark and dies with the light of day, this particular organization which advances the interests of a foreign government has fought long and hard to ensure that its funding sources and expenditures are not exposed to public scrutiny.

Despite its best efforts, however, unwanted light does occasionally shine on AIPAC’s activities. Most dramatically, perhaps, two of its top operatives, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted on espionage charges in 2005. Four years later federal prosecutors dropped the charges when it became clear that Judge T.S. Ellis’ numerous rulings in favor of the defendants would require the release of sensitive government documents. Rosen then sued his former employer for defamation, claiming that AIPAC routinely dealt in classified information and that he was in no way a rogue employee, as AIPAC had claimed.

A related case of unwanted publicity involved former Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who was overheard on a 2006 NSA wiretap talking to someone described by CQ’s Jeff Stein as a “suspected Israeli agent”—thought to be Haim Saban, a major AIPAC contributor. “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” Saban described himself to The New York Times. During the course of their conversation Harman agreed to lobby the Justice Department to reduce the charges against Rosen and Weissman; in exchange, Saban would pressure then-House minority leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee following the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were expected to, and did, win. (Harman, who ultimately was not appointed chair, recently left Capitol Hill to head the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a few blocks away, the Brookings Institution houses the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.)

Even though Pelosi resisted any pressure she may have received from Saban—reportedly because of personal animosity toward Harman as much as anything—she has demonstrated her sensitivity to AIPAC’s concerns. After Pelosi became speaker of the House following the Democrats’ 2006 victory, a provision was included in an Iraq war spending bill which would require the president to seek, with some exceptions, congressional approval before using military force against Iran. Since the Constitution grants the power to declare war to Congress, not to the president, this would appear to be uncontroversial. But AIPAC found it objectionable, and lobbied hard to have that provision struck from the bill. Speaking at AIPAC’s March 2007 annual meeting, Pelosi was booed when she described the Iraq war as being a failure on several counts. Shortly thereafter, the offending language was withdrawn from the pending legislation.  After all, what’s an oath of office between friends?

Nor was that by any means the only legislation tailored to AIPAC’s wishes. Its tax-exempt fund-raising arm, the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), which AIPAC describes on its Web site as a “charitable organization affiliated with AIPAC,” spends the bulk of its $24 million budget paying for congressional trips to Israel. According to the Web site LegiStorm, “When Congress was working on strengthening the travel ban in 2006, reports indicated AIPAC lobbied for an exemption from the ban on lobbyist-sponsored travel. The organization did not receive a specific exemption, but the loophole on allowing non-profit travel allows the organization to continue to sponsor travel.” The non-profit AIEF simply certifies that it “does not retain or employ a registered federal lobbyist.”

That this was no accident was confirmed, perhaps inadvertently, by Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. In a 2009 C-SPAN interview, host Brian Lamb asked about the 2006 travel rules adopted as a result of the Jack Abramoff scandal whereby an “institution of higher learning” can sponsor trips. “Well,” Sloan blithely responded, “this was initially even called the AIPAC exception, there was this exception that 501(c)(3) organizations and universities could, in fact, still sponsor trips.”  To Lamb’s characteristic “Why?” she replied vaguely, “That was the compromise that was reached in the House. They didn’t want to ban all private travel and they thought that these were the kind of trips that were more easily explained and didn’t have the same kind of appearance of corruption.”

More recent sightings of AIPAC’s “invisible hand” include a May 2009 letter to President Barack Obama ostensibly written by then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia—among the top five House recipients of pro-Israel PAC contributions. As the Washington Post’s Al Kamen discovered, however, the e-mail attachment of the letter, which called on the president to act as a “trusted mediator and devoted friend of Israel,” revealed its true origin: it was titled “AIPAC Letter Hoyer-Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

Do Americans want their laws and foreign policies drafted to serve the interests of a foreign government? At the very least, AIPAC’s funding sources and expenditures should be available for scrutiny by the citizens of its host country. In the meantime, the upcoming Move Over AIPAC conference, to be held in Washington, DC May 21-24—at the very time AIPAC will be hosting Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his congressional supplicants at its annual Washington policy conference—will shine a critical and much-needed light on the means and ends of the Israel Lobby’s flagship organization.  There concerned Americans can discover, among other things, whether their elected representatives put the needs of their constituents ahead of Israel’s demands—and visit Capitol Hill to register their opinions. For more information, visit www.moveoveraipac.org.

Janet McMahon is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, www.wrmea.com, whose May/June 2011 issue includes totals for 2010 pro-Israel PAC contributions to all congressional candidates.
Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org.

At the end of one of my first journeys to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2004, I endured a shocking experience at Ben-Gurion Airport. I never imagined that Israeli security forces would abuse a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor, but they held me for five hours, and strip-searched and cavity-searched every part of my naked body. The only shame these security officials expressed was to turn their badges around so that their names were invisible.

The only conceivable purpose for this gross violation of my bodily integrity was to humiliate and terrify me. But it had just the opposite effect. It made me more determined to speak out against abuses by the Israeli government and military.

Yet my own experience, unpleasant as it was, is nothing compared to the indignities and abuses heaped on Palestinians year after year. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is based not on equal rights and fair play, but on what Human Rights Watch has termed a “two-tier” legal system – in other words, apartheid, with one set of laws for Jews and a harsh, oppressive set of laws for Palestinians.

This, however, is the legal system and security state AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) will defend from May 22-24 at its annual conference. And, despite this grim reality, members of Congress will converge to hail AIPAC and Israel. The Palestinians’ lack of freedom is bound to be obscured at the AIPAC conference with its obsessive focus on security and shunting aside of anything to do with upholding fundamental Palestinian rights.

Several years ago near Der Beilut in the West Bank, I saw the Israeli police turn a water cannon on our nonviolent protest. As it happened, I recalled Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and wondered why an ostensibly democratic society responded to peaceable assembly by trying, literally, to drown out the voice of our protest.

In Mas’ha, also in the occupied West Bank, I joined a demonstration against the wall Israel has built, usually inside the West Bank and occasionally towering to 25 feet in height. I saw a red sign warning ominously of “mortal danger” to any who dared to cross in an area where it ran as a fence. I saw Israeli soldiers aiming at unarmed Israelis, Palestinians and international protesters.

I also saw blood pouring out of Gil Na’amati, a young Israeli whose first public act after completing his mandatory military service was to protest against the wall. I saw shrapnel lodged in the leg of Anne Farina, one of my traveling companions from St. Louis. And I thought of Kent State and Jackson State, where National Guardsmen opened fire in 1970 on protesters against the Vietnam War.

So as AIPAC meets and members of Congress cheer, I hold these images of Israel in my mind and fear AIPAC’s ability to move US policy in dangerous directions. AIPAC does a disservice to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the American people. It helps to keep the Middle East in a perpetual state of war and this year will be no different from last year as it keeps up a steady drumbeat calling for war against Iran.

AIPAC pretends to speak for all Jews, but it certainly does not speak for me or other members of the Jewish community in this country who are committed to equal rights for all and are aware that American interventionism is likely to bring further disaster and chaos to the Middle East.

Israel, of course, would not be able to carry out its war crimes against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza without the United States – and our $3 billion in military aid – permitting it to do so. At 86 years old, I use every ounce of my energy to educate the American public about the need to stop supporting the abuses committed by the Israeli government and military against the Palestinian people.

Sometimes there are people who try to shout me down and scream that I am a self-hating Jew, but most of the time the audience is receptive to hear from someone who survived the Holocaust and now works to free the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.

The vicious discrimination brought to bear against Palestinians in the occupied territories deserves no applause this week from members of Congress attending the AIPAC conference. Instead, they should raise basic questions with Israeli officials about decades of inferior rights endured by Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territories.

Hedy Epstein is a Holocaust survivor, who writes and travels extensively to speak about social justice causes and Middle Eastern affairs.

Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org.

"I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Standing in opposition to moral giants like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Ronnie Kasrils — seasoned anti-apartheid activists who resisted injustice and suffered for it  — a group called the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG) has run advertisements in campus papers at Brown University, UCLA, the University of Maryland, and Columbia University, in which 16 of its members criticize Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for calling Israel an “apartheid” state.

The VLG is an organization whose cryptic website reveals little about who is involved, who it represents, what it does, and what it believes in, though the website is peppered with references to the VLG’s participation in AIPAC conferences and tours to the Israeli Knesset.

Nevertheless, under the headline “Words Matter,” this advertisement (offering little in the form of substance, but standing on a slew of bold claims about the intentions and personal qualities of students in SJPs around the country, with whom they have never spoken) boasted the signature of 16 members of the highly opaque AIPAC-affiliated organization.

Apparently that was significant enough to merit international noteworthiness. Before some campus papers like the Columbia Spectator had even had a chance to print the advertisements, the Jerusalem Post triumphantly reported on the VLG’s advertisement, trumpeting what it saw as the very important fact that these 16  signatories are “black student leaders.”

It may be impossible to tell what the VLG members were thinking when they opted to sign this advertisement, since it offers little insight into the reasoning that supports their conclusions about Israel or about SJP — strange qualities for aspiring “leaders.”

What is certain, though, is that moral perspective, sound reason, and the facts of Israeli oppression were not involved in the VLG’s deliberative process. It is unlikely that each of these VLG members made an attempt to reach out to SJP students, and it doubtful that any of them ever took detours from their Israeli Knesset appearances to visit Palestinian refugee camps or witness the Israeli occupation.

Giving the VLG members the benefit of the doubt, maybe they had not bothered to try visiting Gaza for themselves because they were already aware of the fact that the people of Gaza have been under a merciless Israeli military siege since 2006, one that has given dietitians unprecedented influence and prestige in the Israeli military apparatus.

The product of such leadership, then, could not be anything more than the VLG’s incredible claim that: “the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

One might point the VLG student leaders to The Inequality Report, a freshly-minted report by Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel,  which found that “Inequalities between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel span all fields of public life and have persisted over time. Direct and indirect discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is ingrained in the legal system and in governmental practice,” and that “More than 30 main laws discriminate, directly or indirectly, against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the current government coalition has proposed a flood of new racist and discriminatory bills which are at various stages in the legislative process.” (p. 7).

One might also point the 16 VLG members to the State Department’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Israel and the Occupied Territories, which in 2004, in a rare instance of candor, reported that Israel had done “little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens. The State Department’s most recent report, published April 8, 2011, confirmed that 7-year-old finding, that “Principal human rights problems [in Israel] were institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against Arab citizens.” (It should go without saying that racism in Israel is not limited to the anti-Arab variety.)

Setting aside how sincerely the 16 signatories of this op-ed might have felt about their views, there is no question that the excitement of outlets like the Jerusalem Post, the Forward, etcetera, and their rush to cover the breaking story about a paid-advertisement in 4 campus papers signed by a mere 16 students, is supposed to convey an image of entrenched support by Black Americans for Israel, as if (a) such support exists at the grassroots level (an empirical question; given the VLG’s secretive and apparently exclusive nature, it is unlikely to be so representative of Black Americans) and (b) such support, if it even existed, would justify the reality of Israeli apartheid (an easily dismissed logical matter, a simple non sequitur).

The real question is not where the VLG stands on Israel, but rather where people who fight against racial injustice stand. In the experience of groups like SJP at UC Berkeley, solidarity between people who care about racism and social justice has formed a strong rebuttal to Israeli propaganda, which is directly at odds with such struggles. If the VLG believes that it participates in a struggle against racism, then it cannot remain true to its ideals while also standing on the side of racism in Israel.

In that light, it is baffling that, at a time when support for Palestinian freedom and opposition to Israeli oppression grows continuously amidst veterans of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and while racism in Israel reaches unprecedented heights, that the 16 members of VLG who issued the statement would make such an uninformed proclamation about Israeli racism and SJP.

Such striking inaccuracy is either the work of a group that is out of touch, or deliberately disingenuous. One hopes that the VLG aspires to be neither.

For so long, the top dog of pro-Israeli lobbying has ruled the roost. With power barely checked and the ability to pretty much whip Congress into line on Israel, it was only a matter of time before internal divisions led to breaks within, threatening the regime’s reign over the Hill.

If it were only so.

MJ Rosenberg considers the recent revelations coming out in the civil suit between long-time AIPACer Steve Rosen and the organization “big trouble” for the most powerful foreign policy lobby in America. Yes, it should be for them.

Documents filed in the case were brought to light by Grant Smith, who writes that AIPAC and Rosen are “baring all” in this lawsuit. They’re waving all sorts of dirty laundry, from collective online porn viewing at the office, to the cozy relationship Rosen had with the Israeli embassy (his first call was a top deputy there after he got caught handling classified American documents).

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Guest post by Sayed Dhansay

“The worst diplomatic crisis in decades.” These were the words used by Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, recently to describe the perceived rift between Israel and the Obama administration over Israel’s illegal settlement policy in occupied East Jerusalem.

It started when American Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel at the beginning of March to launch “proximity talks” between Israel and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) of Mahmoud Abbas. After 14 months of stalled negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians following Israel’s devastating attack on Gaza, Abbas had finally received the go-ahead from the Arab League to restart talks with Israel.

Though the US routinely uses its veto power to shield Israel at the UN and has never taken concrete measures to curb its colonisation of Palestinian land, official US foreign policy purports to favour a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.

On the very first day of Biden’s visit however, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 new settlement homes in yet another illegal housing project in occupied East Jerusalem. The controversial announcement attracted a storm of international criticism, triggered riots across the occupied West Bank and was seen as an insult and affront to Biden.  Prominent columnist Akiva Eldar questioned in the Israeli daily Haaretz how Israel could “spit in Biden’s face” in such a manner.

The Middle East quartet also weighed in, denouncing the Israeli move with a strongly worded statement, while one of America’s top defence officials, General David Petraeus, also entered the furore. In an unusually stark political comment from a military official, Gen. Petraeus warned that Israel’s intransigence was harming American interests and endangering the lives of American soldiers throughout the Middle East.

Mahmoud Abbas refused to start the proximity talks and US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell – responsible for kick-starting negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis — canceled his impending visit to the region. This was seen as a clear sign of American disapproval at Israel’s unilateral undoing of Mitchell’s hard work over the last year in getting the Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table.

The standoff was underscored a week later when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US President Barack Obama in Washington in an effort to smooth over their differences. After two meetings, the leaders failed to reach consensus on a joint statement. Obama retired from the meetings without appearing for a photo op with his Israeli counterpart, and Netanyahu cancelled his media appearances scheduled for the following morning.

A White House spokesperson also rejected comments made by Netanyahu at his weekly cabinet meeting the previous day. “From our standpoint, building in Jerusalem is like building in Tel Aviv,” the Prime Minister said.

While Israel has declared all of Jerusalem its “eternal, undivided capital”, the international community has never recognized Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the territory is considered illegally occupied by Israel under international law.

“I think at one point the prime minister added that he did not see a distinction necessarily between building in Jerusalem and building in Tel Aviv. We disagree with that,” a spokesman said bluntly ahead of the Washington meeting.

News and political circles were soon abuzz with the escalating public spat between America and one of its closest allies, with whom diplomatic relations are usually exceptionally warm. For those frustrated by America’s bias toward Israel, its massive military, economic and diplomatic support, and silence on its repeated violations of international law, the apparent cracks in the longstanding “special relationship” were a welcome sight to weary eyes.

This excitement proved to be short lived and unwarranted however.

Just days later, both Oren and Petraeus withdrew their comments, the latter of whom reaffirmed America’s “unwavering commitment” to Israel. At the same time, news emerged that the two countries had just sealed a “massive” arms deal, worth roughly a quarter billion dollars which would see the US supply Israel with three new military aircraft.

During that week, Washington also played host to the annual conference of the powerful pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. As America’s most senior diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s warm reception and fervent speech at AIPAC 2010 is a more candid indication of the state of US-Israel ties.

“Thank you for that welcome. And it is wonderful to be back at AIPAC with so many good friends,” she gushed to the cheering crowd of thousands of America’s most hawkish pro-Israel campaigners. She then went on to congratulate AIPAC’s newly appointed president, Lee Rosenberg, before praising several of AIPAC’s directors individually by name for their good example of “citizen activism” and “furthering democracy.”

After the usual platitudes about America and Israel’s “common goals”, “common future” and shared values of “freedom, equality and democracy,” Clinton dove straight into reassuring the delegates of the Obama administration’s commitment to Israel.

To leave no doubts about his political resolve, Clinton evoked the success of the newly passed healthcare legislation after years of campaigning by Obama, and declared: “And let me assure you […] for President Obama and for me, and for this entire Administration, our commitment to Israel’s security and Israel’s future is rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever,” to rapturous applause.

Clinton then went on to praise Netanyahu’s 10-month settlement freeze as an “important first step,” although this has largely been a farce. Because the moratorium excludes East Jerusalem, “public buildings” and housing units that were already underway in the occupied West Bank, changes on the ground have been ineffectual in the eyes of Palestinians.

Furthermore, Netanyahu has publicly stated that settlement construction would resume at full pace after the expiration of the 10-month period. This was confirmed during his AIPAC speech when he defiantly declared: “The Jewish people were building in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and we are building there now. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”

In her scant words of criticism for Israel, Clinton only ventured as far as saying that American policy does not accept the “legitimacy” of continued settlements. She stopped short of mentioning that they are indisputably illegal under international law, and widely accepted as the primary obstacle to achieving peace in the Middle East.

And if any doubt remained in the mind of her audience, she reminded them of the Obama administration’s proven track record of whitewashing Israeli crimes and its repeated interventions to ensure Israel’s evasion from the enforcement of international law.

“We did lead the boycott of the Durban Conference [against Racism] and we repeatedly voted against the deeply flawed Goldstone Report. This administration will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself,” she said.

For those hoping that this short-lived diplomatic dust-up was a ray of hope for a more even-handed American policy in the Middle East, Clinton’s AIPAC appearance and other simultaneous developments suggest otherwise.

Indeed, Israel announced the construction of another 112 settlement homes just a day before Biden’s arrival, and a further 426 a week later without rousing any protest from the Americans. The implication therefore is that the whole outcry was more about the timing of the announcement, rather than its substance.

In addition, the US and Israel are more united on countering Iran’s growing nuclear capabilities than ever before. Good diplomatic relations with Israel in order to protect broader American interests in the Middle East is surely of much greater strategic importance to the Obama administration than Israel’s domestic settlement policy.

Furthermore, the US needs to choreograph “anger” at the Israelis from time to time in order to keep up the pretense of being an honest broker and keeping the so-called “peace process” with the collaborationist PA puppet regime on track. If the peace process charade breaks down permanently, western powers risk losing the loyal obedience of the PA for good, opening up the possibility for Palestinian national reconciliation.

Any potential political consensus between the PA and Hamas would signal disaster for the Americans and Israelis, who have worked overtime to demonise, isolate and exclude the Islamist organization from exercising their democratically earned place in the region’s politics.

The Obama administration has a tough task trying to reign in the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, while also attempting to maintain the pretense of a genuine peace process. The delicate act of balancing these considerations with its own interests is bound to agitate the US occasionally. To consider this squabble as anything more significant however is simply wishful thinking.

By Stephen Maher

The speeches at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group, on Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Netanyahu’s subsequent meeting with US President Barack Obama are widely seen as drawing to a close what Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren called the “most severe crisis in US-Israel relations” in decades. This rapprochement comes on the heels of a series of seemingly angry statements top members of the Obama Administration released, after Israel announced construction of 1,600 new illegal housing units in occupied East Jerusalem while US Vice President Joe Biden was in the country.

In fact, the basis for the Obama Administration’s criticisms of the settlement announcement — as well as the significance of the crisis itself — has been widely misconstrued by both supporters and critics of Israel. AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) were “shocked and stunned” that Biden and Clinton called the Israeli announcement “insulting.” AIPAC urged the administration to “take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state” and “move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel.” Meanwhile, the ADL mused, “One can only wonder how far the US is prepared go in distancing itself from Israel.”

Voices more critical of Israel, such as Richard Dreyfuss of The Nation, suggested that “this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden,” but rather “the Obama Administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence … is a major obstacle to US policy in the region.” Dreyfuss predicted that this “might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel” since the 1956 Suez War.

Contrary to both of these positions, the Obama Administration merely reacted to a diplomatic affront it was dealt by the Israeli government. Israel’s announcement came on the same day that Biden had arrived in the country to proudly confirm the US’ “absolute, total and unvarnished” commitment to its ally, and commence indirect talks with the Palestinians. Following the announcement, protests and violent clashes broke out in Jerusalem and elsewhere throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Responding to this pressure, the Arab League threatened to cancel its endorsement of the indirect negotiations, with Secretary Amr Moussa even announcing that the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had decided not to participate in the talks. As the endorsement was the only political cover Abbas had to re-enter negotiations, the US administration took careful notice of these events as pressure on Abbas to abandon talks from within the territories mounted. With the Arab world outraged and Biden humiliated due to the degree of US complicity that the timing of the announcement revealed, the Obama Administration was forced to react.

Clinton said the timing of the announcement was “insulting,” while top aide David Axelrod called it an “affront” that “seemed calculated” to undermine the peace talks. The Obama Administration hopes that this PR display will allow the US to fortify its farcical claim to be an “honest broker” in the peace process, provide Abbas the political cover to re-enter negotiations, and send a message to the Israeli government that American leaders are to be treated with respect. As CNN reported, Netanyahu has now set up a team to investigate why the settlement construction announcement was made during Biden’s visit.

Netanyahu may well have been telling the truth when he claimed to be “surprised” by the public criticisms by the US government. The day before, one day after US envoy George Mitchell arrived to broker newly-announced “proximity talks,” the State Department explicitly approved Israel’s construction of 112 new apartments in an illegal settlement outside Bethlehem. The assent came despite Netanyahu’s declaration of a “moratorium” on settlement building, which he has insisted cannot include such illegal construction in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, a position the US has accepted.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also chastised Israel for its “provocative actions,” including record-high rates of stripping Palestinians from Jerusalem their residency rights and infringements on Palestinian religious sites that are clearly designed to incite a Palestinian response or otherwise make it impossible for Abbas to return to the negotiating table. Yet even when the administration was at its most critical of Israel, following Obama’s speech in Cairo last year, Israel was reassured that the actions taken by the US would be “largely symbolic.” Indeed, Obama unconditionally re-authorized the loan guarantees program and massive US aid — conservatively estimated at $7 million per day — has continued without threat of reduction.

Obviously, the Obama Administration is hardly concerned about Israeli violations of international law, previous agreements it has signed, or the human rights of the Palestinians. The implication throughout is that had the announcement come a week before Biden visited (or even a day before, as the Bethlehem announcement did) there would have been no problem. Indeed, just one week later, after the Israeli government announced construction on an additional 426 East Jerusalem settlement homes, Clinton “bolstered her support for the Jewish state,” according to The Washington Post. The Israeli army then opened fire on peaceful protestors in Gaza twice in two days, and carried out air strikes on targets in Gaza, while Clinton issued another statement saying that the steps offered by the Israeli government to resolve the dispute were “useful and productive.”

The escalating repression continued Sunday, when the Israeli army shot and killed four Palestinian youths in 24 hours in the West Bank, two aged 18 and two 16. Simultaneously, Netanyahu issued a statement proclaiming that Israel would never cease building illegally in East Jerusalem as Ban Ki-moon arrived in Israel. Clearly, recent condemnations of these projects as “illegal” by Ban and the European Union did not stop Obama from welcoming Netanyahu to Washington on Monday with a private meeting, nor Clinton from proudly sharing the stage with him at the AIPAC conference to reaffirm the US commitment to support Israel’s rejection of the international consensus for resolving the conflict. Though she did say the settlements “undermine mutual trust,” she did not acknowledge their illegality and mostly stressed the threat that US support for them poses to its “credibility” as an “honest broker,” thus urging Israel to refrain from such flagrantly provocative behavior while reinforcing that the US-Israel relationship is “rock solid.”

The US hopes that this pretended outrage will lend its role as “honest broker” enough credibility to keep the “peace process” moving, itself merely a PR facade that shields Israeli crimes from public scrutiny. If it does not, the US will undoubtedly pay little mind to the harsh words spoken this week and do as it has done before: blame the Palestinians for its failure and support Israeli repression.

Stephen Maher is an MA candidate at American University School of International Service who has lived in the West Bank, and is currently writing his masters’ thesis, “The New Nakba: Oslo and the End of Palestine,” on the Israel-Palestine conflict. His work has been appeared in Extra!, ZNet and other publications. His blog is www.rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com.

When I voted for Mr. Obama, I really believed he was going to bring a much desired breath of fresh air to American Foreign Policy in the Middle East. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Palestine were all on the agenda and when I went to the polls, I knew that I needed to choose the biggest lemon I could squeeze in terms of political change. So I went with Mr. Obama. I knew that “change” would come to all but one of the aforementioned areas of interest; Palestine would be the one area to which the “Messiah of Change” would be unable to bring any real change. If you know the situation on the ground, you know that nothing ever changes in Palestine; everything stays the same and if there are changes, they aren’t for the better.

In May however, Mr. Obama did something totally unexpected: he told the Israelis that he wanted a full and complete halt to all settlement activity in the Occupied Territories. It was a decade too late, but it was nice to hear the man have the courage to use a different tone with regards to the whole conflict. Those demands were followed by a trip to Cairo where he used the words “Palestinian,” “suffering,” “humiliation” and “occupation” in the same speech. It was the first time a U.S. president had actually put the Palestinians and the Israelis on equal footing as far as independence and sovereignty were concerned and I honestly believed something good would come of it, but needed to see the “change” take place on the ground.

September soon brought me the “change” I was hoping for as the tri-lateral meeting between the Americans, the Israelis and the Palestinians took place in New York City. Herein lied the “change” I was seeking: a radiant Obama and an energetic Netanyahu, sitting side by side, rubbing elbows and smiling bright for the entire world to see, with an excluded and frustrated Abbas left in the dark, far from the beaming individuals sitting next to him. I knew then that it was only a matter of time before the then-rocky U.S.-Israeli relationship would return to normal and enjoy its six-star comfort level of unwavering political support, unlimited U.S. tax-payer funds and complete immunity from even the slightest word of criticism.

Let’s talk about change, shall we? Mr. Obama calls for a settlement freeze; Mr. Netanyahu says ‘No!’ So Mr. Obama tell Mr. Abbas: ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do!’ They all meet, they have a good time, they talk and nothing happens except Mrs. Clinton coming out one month later and saying that the U.S. will drop its demands on Israel to halt its settlements. She also has the audacity to say that “what the prime minister has offered is unprecedented in the context of prior negotiations.” Let’s be honest for a moment. Mr. Obama, the world’s most powerful man and he can’t do anything to stop Israel from halting its settlement endeavors?

Give me a break!

And Mr. Netanyahu making “unprecedented” offers? The man hasn’t done a thing and we’re rewarding him? What have we come to when we’re the financial backers of a country and our clients refuse to do what we tell them to do? Two options exists: 1) The patrons aren’t really serious about what they want from their clients or 2) the clients have become rogue to the wishes of their patrons. Sounds to me like the U.S. has a disobedient, spoiled brat who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what you ask him to do. And Mr. Obama expects the two sides to cooperate? The man can’t even get the Israelis to stop their illegal operations. How the hell is the man going to get them to ever really come to the table without him yielding to any (and probably all) Israeli demands and preconditions on his administration and on the Palestinian leadership?

Let’s face it: no matter what Mr. Obama does, no matter what the 2009 Nobel Peace Laureate wants to do, the world’s most powerful man is rendered utterly weak and paralyzed thanks to a more powerful political body in Washington, whose political kryptonite has been 100% successful in defending Israel from any potential threats, even if such “threats” are come from the American President himself.

It was Rush Limbaugh, who on the second day of new administration, was quoted as saying: “I want [President Obama] to fail!” Well, Mr. Limbaugh, I guess you’re wish has come true: Mr. Obama has received a double jab with a one-two combination, has been knocked out in the 1^st round and has failed to stop the gears of the Zionist machine from deciding his country’s course of action in Palestine, which from the looks of it, is effectively no course of action, or at least, no effective change to any previous course of action. Now that Palestine is out of the way, let’s hope the President can be a better success with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Guantanamo.

Is it any surprise? No, not really. I hoped for something better with the Obama administration. In the end however, I was handed the same shit, different administration: America remains a slave to her Zionist masters and bends solely to their interests.

So I ask: When will we see change?

Maybe when there’s a President who actually leads and decides for himself what’s best for his country; now that’s “Change I Can Believe In!”

The “attached letter” called for the United States to continue to protect Israel, despite all the problems that has caused the United States and the region.

Though the note on the bottom of the letter says it is “printed on recycled paper,” the content itself is apparently recycled.

Al Kamen of the Washington Post noted the file’s name indicated the letter’s true author: “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”

Kamen commented, “Seems as though someone forgot to change the name or something. AIPAC? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee? Is that how this stuff works?”

[tarboush tip: Hanitizer]