Official: Planet America Revolves Around Israel

Scientifically speaking, we live in a post-Copernican era. That is, we acknowledge that Planet Earth revolves around the Sun.

However, where US foreign policy is concerned, we live in a pre-Copernican era. That is we still think that Planet Israel revolves around America.

Not so! It's actually the other way around: Planet America revolves around Israel.

Still not persuaded?

Here are the relevant clinchers (and a few other gems I took a shine to) from the third foreign policy debate between Barack (Israel is a true friend) Obama and Mitt (We have Israel's back) Romney:

MR: "[T]he greatest threat of all is Iran..."

Channelling Bibi.

MR: "My strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys..."

Not to mention the Lone Ranger.

MR: "Russia... is a geopolitical foe... [it] does continue to battle us in the UN time and time again."

How dare the Russians disagree with us!

BO: "[We've got to] make sure that [Middle East] countries are supporting our counterterrorism efforts... make sure that they are standing by our interests in Israel's security, because it is a true friend and our greatest ally in the region."

The Arabs must stand by our interests in Israel's security? Sort of love me, love my dog.

BO: "And so everything we're doing, we're doing in consultation with our partners in the region, including Israel which obviously has a huge interest in seeing what happens in Syria..."

In consultation? Don't bullshit us, Barry, you're just following orders.

MR: "Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea. It's the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally, Israel. And so seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for us."

I can't find Iran on a map of the Middle East but, hey, anything for Israel, OK?

MR: "We need to make sure as well that we coordinate this effort with our allies, and particularly with - with Israel."

We coordinate? Don't bullshit us, Mitt, you're just following orders.

BO: "And we are making sure that those we help are those who will be friends of ours in the long term and friends of our allies in the region over the long term."

Listen up, Ay-rabs: Israel... what's not to love?

BO: "They have to abide by their treaty with Israel. This is a red line with us, because not only is Israel's security at stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels."

Listen up, Gyppos, tear up your treaty with Israel and we'll screw you good!

MR: "We have to also stand by our allies. I - I think the tension that existed between Israel and the United States was very unfortunate.

It's all your fault, Barry!

BO: "[O]ur alliances have never been stronger, in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, with Israel, where we have unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation, including dealing with the Iranian threat."

Israel as continent.

BO: "We spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined: China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, you name it."

'Cos we gotta look after Israel, OK?

BO: "First of all, Israel is a true friend. It is our greatest ally in the region. And if Israel is attacked, America will stand with Israel. I've made that clear throughout my presidency."

And if Israel attacks, we'll stand with it too!

BO: "I will stand with Israel if they are attacked. And this is the reason why, working with Israel, we have created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two countries in history. In fact, this week we'll be carrying out the largest military exercise with Israel in history, this very week. But to the issue of Iran, as long as I'm president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. I made that clear when I came into office. We then organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy. Their currency has dropped 80%. Their oil production has plunged to the lowest level since they were fighting a war with Iraq 20 years ago. So their economy is in a shambles. And the reason we did this was because a nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security, and it is a threat to Israel's national security."

Whose economy is in a shambles?

BO: "[T]hey have said they want to see Israel wiped off the map."

Seriously now...

MR: "Well... I want to underscore the same point the president made, which is that if I'm President of the United States, when I'm President of the United States, we will stand with Israel. And if Israel is attacked, we have their back, not just diplomatically, not just culturally, but militarily. That's number one."

Anatomically impossible. How can you have Israel's back if you're joined at the hip?

MR: "[C]rippling sanctions are something I called for 5 years ago, when I was in Israel... I laid out 7 steps, crippling sanctions were number one... Number two... is I would tighten those sanctions... Secondly, I'd take on diplomatic isolation efforts. I'd make sure that Ahmadinejad is indicted under the Genocide Convention. His words amount to genocide incitation. I would indict him for it. I would also make sure their diplomats are treated like the pariah they are around the world. The same way we treated the apartheid diplomats of South Africa."

There's nothing I wouldn't do for Israel!

BO: "The clock is ticking. We're not going to allow Iran to perpetually engage in negotiations that lead nowhere. And I've been very clear to them. You know, because of the intelligence coordination that we do with a range of countries, including Israel..."

A range of countries... including Israel. LOL

MR: "I think that when the president said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel [the Iranians] noticed that..."

What'd I say? Joined at the hip.

MR: "Mr President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and to Iraq. And by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region..."

Just who do you think you are, Barry? President?

BO: "If we're going to talk about trips that we've taken - when I was a candidate for office, first trip I took was to visit our troops. And when I went to Israel as a candidate, I didn't take donors. I didn't attend fundraisers. I went to Yad Beshef (ph), the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable. And then I went down to the border towns of Storok (ph), which had experienced missiles raining down from Hamas. And I saw families there who showed me there where missiles had come down near their children's bedrooms. And I was reminded of what that would mean if those were my kids. Which is why as president, we funded an Iron Dome program to stop those missiles."

An American president's gotta do what an American president's gotta do!

MR: "Our relationship with Israel, my relationship with the prime minister of Israel, is such that we would not get a call saying our bombers are on the way, or their fighters are on the way. That is the kind of thing that would have been discussed and thoroughly evaluated well before that kind of - "

Famous last words...

PS 26/10/12: Incredibly, but typically, the SMH editorialist (An America where being reasonable is audacious), writing in yesterday's issue on the final debate, simply DID NOT NOTICE that it was ALL  ABOUT ISRAEL. Nor did its cartoonist, Moir, whose lame comment, in effect, was simply that Romney had emerged the worst for wear.

Mitt Romney is No George Marshall

In a speech given at the Virginia Military Institute on October 8, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney outlined his foreign - basically Middle East - policy goals.

Grotesquely but predictably, despite a decade of unprecedented death and destruction in the region unleashed by Bush and maintained by Obama, primarily to keep Israel and its domestic lobby happy, and despite the US taxpayer being slugged to pay for it all, Romney told us that "[t]here is a longing for American leadership in the Middle East."

No amount of rhetoric about US leadership in the Middle East, however, can disguise the fact that these days US policy there is essentially made in Israel, for Israel. Hence Romney's embrace of the bizarre notion that US and Israeli interests are one and the same:

"The relationship between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, our closest ally in the region, has suffered great strains. The President explicitly stated that his goal was to put 'daylight' between the United States and Israel. And he has succeeded. This is a dangerous situation that has set back the hope of peace in the Middle East and emboldened our mutual adversaries, especially Iran... I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security - the world must never see any daylight between our two nations."

The supreme irony of his speech was his invoking of the memory of US General George C. Marshall:

"Of all the VMI graduates, none is more distinguished than George Marshall - the Chief of Staff of the Army who became Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, who helped to vanquish fascism and then planned Europe's rescue from despair. His commitment to peace was born of his direct knowledge of the awful costs and consequences of wars. General Marshall once said, 'The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.' Those words were true in his time - and they still echo in ours." 

Marshall would have turned in his grave at the thought of this shameless hijacking of his legacy on behalf of a US foreign policy which caters to Israel's every wish and whim. Such is the ignorance of history, even its own, that prevails in the US that we can safely assume that whichever Romney hanger-on wrote his speech, he/she would've been blissfully unaware that, as President Truman's Secretary of State in the critical period leading up to the birth of Israel in May 1948, George Marshall was the key advocate in the Truman White House for putting as much daylight as possible between a nascent Israel and the United States, in opposition to those such as White House counsel and Zionist dupe Clark Clifford who pushed for the opposite.

Guided only by his belief in upholding and defending US and only US interests, Marshall did not support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, favouring instead a UN trusteeship. Nor, when the idea of partitioning Palestine was mooted, did he support throwing America's weight behind it.

Finally, when it came to the matter of Truman (at the urging of Clifford) considering a speedy de facto recognition of the new state of Israel on May 15, 1948, with an eye to securing Jewish votes in an election year, Marshall was fiercely and fearlessly opposed to the idea:

"I remarked to the president that, speaking objectively, I could not help but think that suggestions made by Clifford were wrong. I thought that to adopt these suggestions would have precisely the opposite effect from that intended by him. The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not, in fact, achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the president would be seriously damaged. The counsel offered by Mr Clifford's advice was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem confronting us was international. I stated bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr Clifford's advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against the president." (Quoted in Remembering General George Marshall's clash with Clark Clifford over premature recognition of Israel, Dr Alfred M. Lilienthal, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999)

Unfortunately for the future course of US foreign policy, Marshall stopped short of going public with his principled opposition to Truman's expedient sucking up to Israel firsters. If he had, it just might be the case today that US presidents would be making their own Middle East policy, free of the crippling and demeaning subservience to perceived Israeli interests demanded and engineered by the Israel lobby; that the Middle East would have been largely spared the devastating serial USraeli aggressions so characteristic of our time; and that we'd all be spared the unedifying spectacle of candidates for the American presidency babbling inanely about eliminating daylight between Israel and the United States.

Just imagine...

Great Moments in Sucking Up to Israel

In the latest twist in the unseemly contest between Obamanation and Mitt Romney to see just how low each can go in sucking up to the Israelis, Romney has announced that he would "press for an indictment of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on charges of inciting genocide." (Mitt Romney says he would indict Ahmadinejad for genocide incitement, guardian.co.uk, 29/9/12)

The announcement reportedly came "moments after a phone conversation with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu." (ibid)

What a surprise! Good one, Mitt!

But you're a bit slow, buddy. Our very own Kevin Rudd, once-upon-a-time Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and now not-so-humble backbencher, beat you to the punch years ago, also during an election campaign as it happens, that of 2007 to be precise.

For the curious story of how Krudd conceived (actually had it conceived for him) the risible idea of dragging the Eye-ranian president off to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on a charge of inciting genocide but quietly, and much to the chagrin of our local Israel firsters, dropped the idea a year into his prime ministership, scan my posts under the label Rudd government below, beginning with Testing Time for Rudd (21/12/07) and ending with Unleashing the Zionist Settler Within (15/11/08).

And Krudd, remember, is the Great White Hope of the Australian Labor Party today. God help us.

Gore Vidal , America's George Orwell

Courageous American intellectual, essayist, novelist, playwright and critic of American imperialism, Gore Vidal, died last week.

You wouldn't know though, from the obituaries in the Australian press (Man of letters last of his kind, AP/The Australian, 2/8/12; Insider author understood the world, Guardian News/Sydney Morning Herald, 3/8/12) that one of America's greatest minds had no trouble whatever understanding and deploring the bizarre and malign hold exercised by the Israel lobby over the United States' Middle East policy. 

The only indication in the Australia press that Vidal had somehow escaped the 'Elephant? What elephant?' conditioning and cowardice that characterises most American (and Australian) intellectuals* came from a New York Times piece by Charles McGrath: "Some of his political positions were quarrelsome and provocative. Vidal was an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians..."

There you have it, for The New York Times, anyone who criticises Israel, if not simply ignored or  dismissed outright as an anti-Semite, may be accused of being "quarrelsome and provocative"!

That the US (and The New York Times) had a bit of an 'elephant' problem, was nothing new for Vidal. He was aware of it back in the 60s:

"As I left, I told [Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, editor of Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper and friend of its president, Gamal Abdul Nasser] that if I saw Nasser at the end of the week I was perfectly willing to present to the American public Egypt's case against Israel, just as Egypt would like it presented. Partly out of a sense of mischief (we hear altogether too much of the other side) and partly out of a sense of justice, I thought that the Arab case should be given attention in the American press. As of now it has been disregarded. In fact, a few years ago the Egyptians, despairing of ever seeing their cause presented impartially in the usual 'news' columns, tried to buy an advertisement in The New York Times. They were turned down. As a result, the Egyptians are somewhat cynical about our 'free press.' They are also quite aware that when Israel was founded in 1948 and the Arabs protested to Harry Truman, he told them with characteristic bluntness: 'I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.'** Heikal laughed when I told him that the Arab point of view might one day be given in the American national press. 'Your press would never let you,' he said with finality, as one journalist to another. 'Don't even try.'" (Passage to Egypt (1963), in The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal, Edited by Jay Parini, 2008, p 283)

And here's Vidal discussing the 'elephant' 30 years later, in his Foreword to the first printing (1994) of Israel Shahak's Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years:

"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him 2 million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.

"Unfortunately, the hurried recognition of Israel as a state has resulted in 45 years of murderous confusion, and the destruction of what Zionist fellow travellers thought would be a pluralistic state - home to its native population of Muslims, Christians and Jews, as well as a future home to peaceful European and American Jewish immigrants, even the ones who affected to believe that the great realtor in the sky had given them, in perpetuity, the lands of Judea and Samaria. Since many of the immigrants were good socialists in Europe, we assumed that they would not allow the new state to become a theocracy, and that the native Palestinians could live with them as equals. This was not meant to be. I shall not rehearse the wars and alarms of that unhappy region. But I will say that the hasty invention of Israel has poisoned the political and intellectual life of the USA, Israel's unlikely patron.

"Unlikely, because no other minority in American history has ever hijacked so much money from the American taxpayers in order to invest in a 'homeland'. It is as if the American taxpayer had been obliged to support the Pope in his reconquest of the Papal States simply because one third of our people are Roman Catholic. Had this been attempted, there would have been a great uproar and Congress would have said no. But a religious minority of less than 2% has bought or intimidated 70 senators (the necessary two thirds to overcome an unlikely presidential veto) while enjoying the support of the media."

These days the best indication of an individual's true worth as a man and an intellectual is to seek out the opinion of a leading Zionist shill on him and assume the opposite. As it happens, Israel's loudest voice in the Australian ms media, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, has called Vidal "no George Orwell" (Celebrity novelist insulted enemies with mocking style, The Australian, 2/8/12), so there you have it, folks; Vidal is America's George Orwell.

[*Characterised most recently by US geographer Jared Diamond's complete failure to mention the Palestinians and Israel's occupation when correcting Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's misrepresentation of his Guns, Germs & Steel thesis, which Romney had cited to claim that Israel's 'success' vis-a-vis the Palestinians boiled down to cultural superiority. (See Romney hasn't done his homework, New York Times, 1/8/12); ** To correct Vidal, Truman was actually speaking to a group of America's diplomats in the Middle East (See my 21/4/10 post No George Marshall.).

President Thug & Prime Minister Vandal

"The Child is father of the Man." William Wordsworth

"Mitt Romney returned from a 3-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn't having it. 'He can't look like that. That's wrong. Just look at him!' an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend... A few days later, Friedermann entered Stevens Hall off the school's collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber's hair. Friedermann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors." (Mitt Romney's prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents, Jason Horowitz, The Washington Post, 10/5/12)

"After a big night out in my fourth year of university, a squad car observed me trying to bend over a street sign in a test of strength with a fellow student. This time I pleaded guilty, but no conviction was recorded. After a particularly riotous Queen's College middle common room dinner, a mate and I detoured through Magdalen College on the way home and did a little late-night gardening." (Battlelines, Tony Abbott, 2009, p 9)

File Under: Israel Lobby? What Israel Lobby?

Mark Twain once noted that "If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times." And at another time, that "... policemen and politicians... are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum... in America."

Now if we combine, tweak and update the two, we get something like this: 'American politicians are the arse-licking pimps and slaves of AIPAC scum and this is nowhere more apparent than at election time' - an apt introduction to the following compilation of clueless kowtowings and gibbering genuflections to the Israel lobby by the current crop of Republican reptiles. Warning: Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear you:

Rick Perry: Listen Wolf, if Israel built a settlement up your bum it'd be legal, OK?

Wolf Blitzer: Since '67, every US president, Democrat and Republican, have called Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories, in the West Bank, illegal under international law. Would you continue that policy?
Rick Perry: Are you talking about Israeli settlements?
B: Yes.
P: ... No I wouldn't. I consider the Israeli settlements to be legal, from my perspective, and I support them.
B: Even if they're in the West Bank?
P: Where there is arrangements that have been made, where the Israelis are clearly on Israel's land that they have hard fought to win and to keep, absolutely.
B: But this is seen by the State Department as occupied Palestinian territory.
P: I don't always agree with the State Department. I think our State Department from time to time gets it wrong. I happen to believe that Israel spends way too much time defending itself from people who want to do terrorist acts against them, whether it's Palestinians, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's Hamas, and the US needs to be standing with Israel, strongly standing with 'em and supporting...
B: Would you move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
P: Absolutely.
B: When?
P: As soon as I could. I would clearly say, 'If you want to work for the State Department of the United States, you need to be packing your bags and moving to Jerusalem as soon as you can'.
B: Would you fear negative reaction from the...
P: No, listen. How many other countries do we have our embassy not in the capital of the... the country, in..?
B: We're going back to '48 when Israel was established. No American president has recognised Jerusalem as being the capital of Israel.
P: There may not have been a president of the United States who feels as strongly about Israel as I do.
B: Well, Ronald Reagan didn't feel strongly about Israel?
P: Obviously, not as I do... I'm not saying...
B: GW Bush or GHW Bush?
P: Not as strong as I do.
B: So you would move it right away?
P: I would move it, yes sir.

Michele Bachmann: Israel is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures... Oh... oh... OH!... Yesss!

"Most Americans recognise that Israelis and Americans are two sides of the same coin because we share the same values and the same aspirations. We even share the same exceptional mission: to be the light to the nations. After all, the image of America as the shining city on the hill is taken from the Book of Isiah. I was raised in a home full of love for Israel. We learned that our Christian faith is rooted in Judaism. Without the laws of Moses, without the temple in Jerusalem, there would have been no Sermon on the Mount. It was this love and appreciation for Israel and the Jewish faith that brought me to Israel in the summer of 1974 to volunteer at a kibbutz... and it was during my time at the kibbutz... that I came to understand that Israel is not merely the cradle of my faith, it's the greatest strategic asset that the US has in the region and I realise that the forces of terror, mayhem and hatred that Israel needs to keep at bay are the same forces that threaten Americans..." (Update from Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on Israel, youtube.com, 10/6/11)

"It's over 800 billion dollars that we have expended [in Iraq]. I believe that Iraq should pay us back for the money that we spent, and I believe that Iraq should pay the families that lost a loved one several million dollars per life, I think at a minimum." (Bachmann wants Iraqis to pay 'several million dollars per life' for every American who died in Iraq, Ian Millhiser, thinkprogress.org, 13/12/11)

Newt Gingrich: Can you believe it? Those Palestinians, who don't exist BTW, refuse to recognise Israel's existence!

"I see myself as being in many ways pretty close to Bibi Netanyahu's thinking about the dangers of the world. I believe in a tough realism. I believe if somebody is firing rockets at you, they're probably not engaged in a peace process. I believe if somebody goes around saying you don't exist, they're probably not preparing for peace." (The Jewish Channel exclusive interview with GOP representative & former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, 9/12/11)

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places." (ibid)

Mitt Romney: OMG! Obummer told Bibi what to do! I can't believe he actually said that. No one, but no one tells Bibi what to do, OK?

Interviewer: You said that the President threw Israel under the bus when he said that Israel should go back to the '67 borders... explain what you meant.
Romney: I think it's pretty clear that when Bibi Netanyahu got here that something very dramatic had happened and that the President, by insisting on the '67 borders, laid out what a bargaining position might be that perhaps the Israelis might take the lead on, not America. You don't tell your ally how you would settle a dispute between them and another people. You stand by your ally, you link arms with your ally. Israel is one of our best allies in the Middle East - the best ally in the Middle East. We don't dictate to Israel what the terms of their agreement ought to be." (Mitt Romney interview 'Obama threw Israel under the bus', youtube.com, 3/6/11)

"I've known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. We worked together at Boston Consulting Group and... would get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say, 'Would it help if I said [the Palestinians are an 'invented people']? What would you like me to do? Let's work together because we're partners." (Mitt Romney goes after Newt Gingrich on Israel, abcnews.go.com, 10/12/11)