In an article that expands our knowledge base about the anything-but-grassroots “Freedom’s Watch” (about which I have posted here and here), Paul Kane and Jonathan Weisman wrote about its ambitions — among other things, to raise $250 million this year to become the right-wing answer to MoveOn.org — in the Washington Post Sunday. The article noted that the group, after focusing its initial work on Iraq and Middle East policy, is now running “aggressively negative anti-illegal-immigration ads” on behalf of Republican candidates.
As has been previously reported, the group was conceived at a meeting last March of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the Post article tends to confirm the notion that it is a kind of RJC project. But, apart from the article’s substance, what I found most provocative about the article was one particular paragraph toward the end in which the authors wrote: “Many in Freedom [sic] Watch’s donor base — including [multi-billionaire Sheldon] Adelson, the chairman and chief executive of the Last Vegas Sands Corp. [about whom the New York Times published a profile just last week] and [former Amb. Mel] 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 troops buildup in Iraq came naturally out of those interests.” I found this paragraph compelling for two reasons.
First, the latter sentence makes a connection that the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored and that remains somewhat taboo — the connection between the Iraq War and “support” for Israel . (I have long contended that, along with the kind of global geo-strategic thinking that first came to public attention in the leaked 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) overseen by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the main impetus for war — at least, for the neo-conservatives around Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld both inside and outside the administration — was tilting the balance of power in the Middle East decisively in favor of Israel.) Unfortunately, having asserted this very controversial — if rarely voiced — connection, the Post article does not elaborate precisely how Freedom’s Watch’s backing for the “Surge” arose from its “support” for Israel. It’s as if the Post believes that the connection is common knowledge and that no further explanation is needed. Yet the Post, like other mainstream media, has never made clear what the connection between support for Israel and the Iraq War is.
That leads to the second point: 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. In fact, Adelson, like most RJC heavyweights, are strong supporters of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party which, the last time I checked, constituted the government’s chief political opposition and is maneuvering to bring it down. So, if they oppose the current government of Israel, in what way are they “strong supporters of Israel?”
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.
You become who you hate. This occurs at the national level. too.
At the end of the day I can’t see this as Geo-strategic. The US/West has known for about 75 yrs now oil will run out and what have we done to conserve it or gear up for “alternative energy”. Despite “population explosion”, there is PLENTY of resorces and land in this world, especially in US & West. Food is cheap. Wars over territory, why?..people almost all want to live in city’s.
I suspect it’s an enormous rort ….pure & simple!….and the target is taxpayers….and, everone in the system is just covering for their “meal ticket”.
As long as the “international (& probably tax free banking) “pro-war” Money boy’s control/own the media and thus “public opinion” (& do “smear campaigns” to get rid of opposition), AND, can “buy” the political party’s (thus control all the Govt. (& internal dissent) they can virtually get ANY LAWS, MONEY AND JUSTICE THEY WANT…..It’s bribery pure & simple.
America is still a very racist country. The warmongers who “push” Israel and America to dominate the world are the problem here. The racist attitudes of the so called “leaders” of both wings of the War Party in America cause so much trouble the world over. The majority of Americans seem to be deaf, dumb, and blind to the truth. Why? They get their “news” from the TV for one. Also, they seem to be so “involved” in “reality TV” that thinking gives them a headache. Americans no longer seem able to think honestly about much at all. They fall for the racist crap about “Arabs” and “Islam”. Hell, they buy the absolute crap called “Islamofacism” for crap sake! What a joke. The word is pure horse manure.
I fear that America will become more anti-Semitic than Nazi Germnay was. We seem to headed that way and fast. This causes me great concern, not because I am Jewish, I am not. In fact, I do not believe in any religion myself. But I can see how there will be a backlash against Israel and by extention, all Jews. It sadens me to see this possibility here in America, but I fear we are going in that direction. We have lost our original goals as a country. We have gone abroad too often in search of monsters to destroy. As Art Kelly said in the old “Pogo” cartoon; We have met the enemy, and he is us. How very sad that this is how America has fallen. How sad to see the destructuion of Martin Luther King Jr’s “dream” for America.
I think the current situation for the US/West is extremely dangerous right NOW because, if the USA gets another “pro-war” President claiming these almost “total control” powers just what will happen?
When one sees what “the powers behind the throne” have achieved in the past few years…..(eg scrapping Habeas corpus, redefining “opinion” as “sedition”….committing “criminal acts of invasion, kidnap & torture”….and, other things , the virtual destruction of what ought be the most successful economy on earth)….. WHAT CAN THEY DO IN 4 more yrs. of this madness?
“From their own bunkers” they well might start a MAJOR World War and “wipe out” who knows what …..including FOREVER & EVER & EVER, all dissent, debate & criticism as to better ways forward…….
I belierve a Presidential aspirant who does not clearly oppose wrongful “interventions” & total “military withdrawals/settlements” from places & scrapping “police state laws” will be a disaster …..for not just the whole “free” world but the whole world.
Wrong wars are a racket……trade brings wealth not territory…..the Brit’s gave us Australia (perhaps thanks to our cousins in USA) and have made a FORTUNE out of trading with us………
I agree with the fact that people are often described in shorthand which creates false associations. Neocons and the long-term welfare of the state of Israel are not necessarily a good association. Be that as it may, I have another concern
with this lobbying. The use of the illegal immigrant as a whipping boy plays into the myths being generated by neocons about the dangers from terror to the US.
There is also another factor: it is that there are people it is okay to be in an empire, and people who should never aspire to be important. If you are born in the US to illegals, you are, under the US Constitution, an American citizen. If you have an infant ear infection, they will see you in the emergency room. If you are ready for school, they must take you. You are home. Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in. But not for a Palestinian. Are the Mexicans to be turned into the American version of Palestinians? If this succeeds, our moral authority for demanding anything of Israel towards the Palestinians will be history. But experience tells me that Mexicans have been taking care of this country for a long time. I do not claim to be of such a favored race that the workers shall not be worthy of their hire, that they should occupy the fearful position of strangers and slaves. I scorn those men who would lead my country astray into thinking of their fellow men in such terms.