Now What Was That About Kremlin Influence in US Politics?

A mind-blowing riff/update to Mearsheimer and Walt's The Israel Lobby & US Foreign Policy (2007) by mondoweiss.net's excellent Philip Weiss:

"Over the weekend there was a lot more talk about Donald Trump... loving Russia, and about how Vladimir Putin wants Trump to win. 'The hand of the Kremlin has been at work in this campaign for some time,' Hillary Clinton's campaign manager said on ABC. The Russian influence must be true because it's all over our media; but you can be sure it's only half true because they're saying it so loud. The other half of the truth is that Russia is going to lose, big (because the media are talking about it and because Trump is going down). And the media have a guilty conscience, because they know the US power structure is beholden to Israel, but they can't talk about that foreign influence.

"No one talks about the hand of Israel; but Hillary Clinton promises her biggest donor, Haim Saban, whose one issue is Israel, that she'll work against the boycott campaign and she'll meet Benjamin Netanyahu in her first month of office: the same Netanyahu who tried to undermine our president's signature foreign policy achievement by speaking and lobbying Congress under the president's nose, Netanyahu who said that America could be easily moved, Netanyahu who pushed the Iraq war in 2002 to transform the Middle East, even as Hillary Clinton was voting for that war.

"The latest batch of Clinton emails show that then Secretary of State Clinton was shuffling her schedule to meet with big Clinton Foundation donors who care about Israel. 'I'm on shuttle w Avigdor Libermann... I want to stop by to see hrc tonite for 10 mins,' wrote one of them.

"When Donald Trump tried to take a 'neutral' position on Israel, Hillary Clinton told the leading Israel lobby group AIPAC that he had 'no business' being president and she was going to take the relationship with Israel 'to the next level.' "When Bernie Sanders tried to stake out a neutral position on Israel, Clinton's catspaw at the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, complained privately, 'The Israel stuff is disturbing.' Or as Anne Lewis, Clinton's political guru who is also a Zionist, said, 'The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel.'

"Both Clinton, this summer, and Obama, four summers ago, squashed the party's grass roots when they made a move to change the party platform on Israel, because the nominees worried about losing big Jewish Zionist donors - whose influence over the Democratic Party is 'gigantic' and 'shocking,' JJ Goldberg and Stephanie Schriock of Emily's List said this spring.

"So Clinton made sure that the word 'occupation' didn't appear in the platform, in this the 50th year of the occupation. Just as Neera Tanden, the Clinton aide who heads a Democratic Party thinktank, censored articles that were critical of Israel; and a few months later the authors of those articles were no longer employed by her thinktank; and meantime Tanden kissed up to Benjamin Netanyahu, at the very time he was undermining President Obama on the Iran deal, and months after he had used racist appeals - 'Arab voters are coming out in droves' - to win another term.

"But let's talk about Russian influence.

"It has now been 10 years since The Israel Lobby paper was published in London - not here, because it couldn't be published here. Notwithstanding the article and book's impact, it's a shadow impact; everyone in the shadow of the establishment has read it and everyone in the establishment has read it too, but with a plain brown cover on it, as Colin Powell's former chief of staff joked. Because to be in the establishment you must deny its importance. The Atlantic, which commissioned and killed the original paper, continues to publish Jeffrey Goldberg, who once served in the Israeli military, and who helped give us the Iraq war with bad reports in 2002, and who tried to undermine the Iran deal and who calls the fascistic defense minister Avigdor Lieberman by his nickname 'Yvet' and the milquetoast centrist Yitzhak Herzog by his nickname 'Boogie.'

"And everyone in American public life calls the fascistic prime minister of Israel by his nickname, Bibi. Including PBS. I don't know what Vladimir Putin's nickname is, and I don't want to know.

"The central idea of the Israel lobby is simple and it has been confirmed a hundred times but the media will never report it directly. Here it is: United States support is an existential issue for Israel; but non-Jewish voters and leaders cannot be counted upon to love Israel on their own, and therefore the tiny American Jewish community must speak in one voice and (unified checkbooks) persuade American leaders that it's in the US's best interest to do so.

"Israel supporters confirm this idea again and again. 'What keeps me up at night is the dependence of Israel on the United States' - Abe Foxman. 'American Jews had a deferential attitude toward Israel. They saw their job to support Israel, to provide Israel with financial and political support it asked for' - Dov Waxman, scholar. 'Jews don't like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel' - the late neocon godfather Irving Kristol. 'We [Jews] don't need to be advocates for Palestinians. We need to be advocates for Israel... because the essence of Zionism is... you [Jews] shape your destiny, you don't let others do it' - perennial White House aide and peace processor-charade leader Dennis Ross.

"So the Emergency Committee for Israel, a group started by Kristol's son Bill, gives Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton nearly $1m so he could become Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton after just 2 years in the House and then lead the charge against the Iran deal.

"But let's talk about Russia's influence.

"Israel's influence has distorted our politics for nearly 40 years. Tom Friedman told a British interviewer that George W Bush abandoned the peace process because he saw his father take on the Israel lobby and lose a second term. Tom Friedman said the Congress is 'bought and paid for' by the Israel lobby. Tom Friedman told an Israeli interviewer that if you put 25 neoconservatives on a desert island in 2002, we wouldn't have had an Iraq war.

"But Friedman never wrote about the lobby head on, a dereliction of duty if ever there was one. It is just too embarrassing or hurtful to talk about the role of Zionist Jews in US public life. The idea has to be suppressed because a) we all know that there is a dual loyalty element implicit in Zionism and talking about the lobby brings up the whole international-Jew canard; and b) the lobby has been effective by working behind the scenes as a 'nightflower,' so its purpose is defeated when people talk about it and everyone gets to weigh in. But if you don't talk about it, then everyone just accepts it as the given of the American power structure, which is where we are now. Chris Mathews is constantly doing Irish Catholic identity politics when Irish Catholic Americans come on his show, but he's afraid to say boo about the powerful pro-Israel Jews who own/run his employer Comcast, the largest media company in the country...

"From the start, empowered Jewish journalists denied that there was a lobby or it was powerful. Jeffrey Goldberg told the Center for Jewish History that it was no different from the ball-bearings lobby. David Remnick made the joke that if there wasn't an Israel lobby, Osama bin Laden would be able to go back into the construction business. And meanwhile he was publishing Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting about Saddam's links to Al Qaeda and Saddam's acquisition of WMD that helped the US get into Iraq. Why did Goldberg push this stuff? Was it out of concern for Israel? There's never been an accounting.

"And three years after his Osama joke, Remnick gave an interview to a Hebrew publication in which he acknowledged that the American Jewish community had sustained the occupation:

How long can you expect that they [US Jews] will love unconditionally the place called Israel? You've got a problem. You have the status of an occupier since 1967... Sorry it can't go on this way. The Jewish community is not just a nice breakfast at the Regency.

"But like Friedman, Remnick doesn't publish this analysis under his byline. It's out of the side of his mouth. He knows there's a price to be paid. With the exception of Yousef Munayyer, Remnick publishes Zionists - people like Ari Shavit, who works for AIPAC and lobbies Jewish kids on campus, and David Makovsky, of the AIPEC spinoff WINEP, who has said that checkpoints won't be so burdensome when Israel uses 'appropriate biometrics' for Palestinians in those lines. The magazine's go-to reporter on Israeli political trends is Bernard Avishai, who's very good, but let's be clear - a cultural Zionist.

"If you don't like Russia, you can surely still make your way in public life, but if you don't like Israel, it's a CLM, as they say at Goldman Sachs. Career Limiting Move. When Jim Clancy accused pro-Israel groups of doing 'hasbara,' or PR, around the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, he lost his job at CNN. When Jimmy Carter accused Israel of practicing apartheid, he got attacked on air by Wolf Blitzer and Terry Gross and was exiled from the Democratic Convention.

"And four reporters at the New York Times have had kids in uniform for Israel, including columnist David Brooks, the go-to pundit on NPR and PBS who said after his dozenth trip to Israel that he is 'gooey-eyed' about Israel. And the New York Times bureau chief in Israel lives in an addition to a house that was stolen from a prominent Palestinian journalist in 1948; and that journalist's daughter the physician and activist Ghada Karmi has written and spoken about visiting that house to try and overcome her pain; but one thing you can be sure of: That story won't be in the New York Times. Josh Marshall will tell you all about Russia influencing Trump, and meantime he names his baby after an Israeli war hero, but ho hum.

"But let's talk some more about the Kremlin.

"The media is all about how much money Paul Manafort got from the Ukrainians, but the media won't tell you that the two guys advocating the bombing of Assad in the New York Times work at a thinktank, WINEP, that the Israel lobby group AIPAC spun off, and one of those authors has called for American Jews to be 'advocates for Israel,' not for Palestinians. It won't tell you that Sheldon Adelson regrets wearing an American uniform, and wished he was wearing an Israeli uniform.

"It will never put all the facts together and name the trend, as I'm doing here right now, out of my back pocket. So I remember that Samantha Power once described the Israel lobby as 'a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import,' and as a result had to make the execrable rabbi Shmuley Boteach her consort in the rightwing Jewish community, so as to get the lobby's approval for her appointment to the UN job.

"And that Chuck Hagel once said that 'the Jewish lobby intimidates people' on Capitol hill, and he almost didn't become Defense Secretary because of that, and his grilling by the Senate resulted in a Saturday Night live sketch that didn't air in which Hagel was asked if he would 'fellate a donkey for Netanyahu.'*

"That's one good thing, everyone's now in on the joke. Even if the media can't discuss it, everyone knows it. Our system is rigged.

"But enough about all that. Let's talk about Russian influence." (Let's talk about Russian influence, 23/8/16)

[*See my 14/2/13 post USrael: The Movie.]

And Speaking of Duds...

Why does The Age see fit to inflict the inane nonsense of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman on its readers?

Inanities such as these from Go tell it to the people: lead, follow or get out of the way (12/5/12):

"Every one of these awakening [Arab] countries needs to make the transition from Saddam to Jefferson without getting stuck in Khomeini."

"Who will tell the [Arab] people that, for the past 50 years, most of the Arab regimes squandered their dictatorship moments?"

"Arab dictatorships... used their authority to enrich a small class and to distract the masses with 'shiny objects' - called Israel, Iran and Nasserism to name but a few."

"Who will tell the [Arab] people that... Islam... is not 'the answer' for Arab development today? Maths is the answer."

"The new generation royals in Morocco, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, who do have the legitimacy to pull people together and drive change, are probably the most effective leaders in the region today."

Some questions of my own:

Who will tell the opinion editors (Paul Austin/Sushi Das) of The Age what colonial crap this is?

And, more important: Why do they even need telling? Isn't it bloody obvious?

Been There, Done That

Apparently, stir crazy "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for The New York Times, signalling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper's editorial policy on Israel." (Netanyahu snubs NY Times, Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post/The Australian Jewish News, 23/12/11)

Oh dear! Oh dearie dearie dear!

But the last straw, it seems, came when hip* liberal Zionist "Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the resounding ovation Netanyahu received in Congress when he spoke there in May had been 'bought and paid for by the Israel lobby'." (ibid)

OMG! Did he say thaaat?

Fraid so. And the following denunciation, by AIPAC-funded Israel firster Steve Rothman** (Democrat, New Jersey), is just the tip of the denunciatory iceberg:

"Thomas Friedman's defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish state of Israel is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the US. Friedman is not only wrong, but he's aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters." (ibid)

But this really is the proverbial storm in a teacup. Friedman had, in fact, said as much, if a tad less forcefully, back in 1989, in his book, From Beirut to Jerusalem:

"Having become organized and energized around support for Israel [after 1967], the American Jewish community began to really assert itself on the American political scene. The so-called Jewish lobby, the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC), became one of the most powerful lobbying organizations in Washington, thanks to its ability to organize important constituencies of Jews all across America to vote in their local elections on the basis of which candidate was most supportive of aid to Israel... In the old days, when American Jews were known to support an array of liberal issues, an American politician who received campaign contributions from Jews could not really know if that support was linked to his position on labor rights, civil rights, abortion, or school prayer. However, as key Jewish philanthropists formed political action committees [PACs] focused exclusively on contributing money to those office seekers ready to support Israel, it became obvious to candidates that the most efficient way to raise funds was not by focusing on the 500 issues which span the spectrum of liberal ideology, but rather by focusing exclusively on Israel... The more that happened, the more American Jews realized that they could ride Israel... into the corridors of power. Jews did not get invited to the White House to discuss the Jewish aged or prayer in public schools. But a Jew who contributed large amounts of money to AIPAC, either at the local or national level, might find himself being consulted by his congressman about a particular foreign aid bill, or, if he was really lucky, invited to the State Department for an audience with the Secretary of State himself." (pp 457-458)

That was then. Imagine now.

[*I mean how hip is this: "There are many Iraqis embedded with US forces in Kirkuk. In the dining hall on the main base, I like to watch the Iraqi officers watching the melting pot of US soldiers around them - men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics - and wonder: What have they learned from us? We left some shameful legacies here of torture and Abu Ghraib, but we also left a million acts of kindness and a profound example of how much people of different backgrounds can accomplish when they work together." (Goodbye Iraq, and good luck, NYT, 15/7/09). Such a pity Friedman's melting pot didn't do it for Pvt. Daniel Chen, who was dragged across a floor, pelted with stones, forced to hold liquid in his mouth while hanging upside down, and mercilessly taunted for his Asian background such that he either committed suicide or was murdered, the jury being still out on this one. (See War with fellow soldiers proves deadly, AP/The Australian, 22/12/11); ** According to the document Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2000, Congressional Candidates 1999-2000 cycle, Rothman had bagged a 'career total' of $20,503, wrmea.com]

The View from Planet Friedman

So much for Hossam Hamalawy on Egypt and its intifada (last post). Didn't all those references to Palestine give you the shits, eh? Anyway, what would he know, he's just a bloody gypo for crysake!

And thinking back, I don't even know now why I posted the damn thing. I mean, who needs all that tedious history, Egyptian at that, to explain what's going on over there right now? No, if you really want to know what the fuss is all about, you need a cool, creative, credible, Israel-friendly American voice to put you right.

Yes, you know who I'm referring to, don't you? That's right - Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times:

Like, who needs homework?

"We know the big causes - tyranny, rising food prices, youth unemployment and social media. But since being in Egypt, I've been putting together my own back-of-the-envelope guess list of what I'd call the 'not-so-obvious forces' that fed this mass revolt." (This Is Just the Start, 1/3/11)

There's what I'd call the OMG! If Obama can do it, so can we! factor (Hamalawy? You listening?)

"I'm convinced that listening to Obama's 2009 Cairo speech - not the words, but the man - were more than a few young Arabs who were saying to themselves: 'Hmmm, let's see. He's young. I'm young. He's dark-skinned. I'm dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I'm an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future'. I'd put that in my mix of forces fueling these revolts." (ibid)

So, Hamalawy, how come you didn't think of that?

Then there's the OMG! If Israel can do it, so can we! factor (Hamalawyyy?)

"The Arab TV network Al Jazeera has a big team covering Israel today. Here are some of the stories they have been beaming into the Arab world: Israel's previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, had to resign because he was accused of illicitly taking envelopes stuffed with money from a Jewish-American backer. An Israeli court recently convicted Israel's former president Moshe Katsav on 2 counts of rape, based on accusations by former employees. And just a few weeks ago, Israel, at the last second, rescinded the appointment of Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant as the army's new chief of staff after Israeli environmentalists spurred a government investigation that concluded General Galant had seized public land near his home. This surely got a few laughs in Egypt where land sales to fat cats and cronies of the regime that have resulted in huge overnight profits have been the talk of Cairo this past year. When you live right next to a country that is bringing to justice its top leaders for corruption and you live in a country where many of the top leaders are corrupt, well, you notice." (ibid)

Hey, you, Hamalawy! Why didn't you mention in your article how all those anti-Mubarak protesters were inspired - inspired! - by the example of Israel's unswerving commitment to Justice!

And not least, there's the OMG! If Salam Fayyad can do it, so can we! (aka Fayyadism) factor (Hamalawyyyyyy!)

"Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad introduced a new form of government in the Arab world in the last 3 years, something I've dubbed 'Fayyadism'. It said: judge me on my performance, on how I deliver government services and collect the garbage and create jobs - not simply on how I 'resist' the West or Israel. Every Arab could relate to this." (ibid)

That's right, Hamalawy, didn't it occur to you how vibrantly green with envy Egyptians are when they see the utopia created by Salam Fayyad under Israel's benevolent watch in the West Bank? Oh, man, they've got a garbage collection to die for! There's a can for nonrecyclables, a can for recyclables and yet another for garden waste - mainly withered roses, collected from the streets after having been showered on visiting Israeli troops, who, let's face it, are the ones who have really made this Palestinian paradise possible. Face it, Hamalawy, this is the kind of garbage collection Egyptians can only dream about. Now how can you call yourself a responsible journalist after leaving that out of the mix?

But is it acceptable to the Israelis?

It's the final day of 2010. Just time to squeeze in another rambamming:

"A group of journalists, thinkers [!] and business leaders, led by former NSW premier Bob Carr, has returned from Israel following a mission hosted by the NSW division of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC) earlier this month. AICC chairman Kim Jacobs said the mission's aim was to provide a 'whole understanding' of the Jewish Sate. '[It was] basically to explore and understand why Jews and Israel have been so successful over the years, and to understand it from a cultural viewpoint, from a business viewpoint, from an economic, geopolitical viewpoint, and to get a whole overview of the whole country', Jacobs said. 'Everyone came away really as a devotee of Israel and understanding what Israel is about'." (Carr leads chamber tour, The Australian Jewish News, 24/12/10)

Love was in the air
Everywhere they looked around
Love was in the air
Every sight & every sound

"The tour differed from those usually offered by the AICC in that it was not purely about business. Activities ranged from a meeting with Israeli author Etgar Keret* and a talk with a representative from a foreign policy think tank the Reut Institute*, to visits to the Weizmann Institute and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The group also visited Yad Vashem, where Carr laid a wreath, and heard from radio commentator Yaron Deckel*. They toured Masada and the Dead Sea, and visited deaf and blind theatre group Nalaga'at. The delegation also heard from a Koran scholar and visited the Peres Peace Centre." (ibid)

[* Carr quotes Etgar Keret in his blog, Thoughtlines with Bob Carr, to the effect that Israel's Labor Party gave the Palestinians Oslo, but hey, all peace-loving Israelis got in return was a second Intifada. And, moreover, Sharon gave the Palestinians Gaza, but hey, all peace-loving Israelis got was Hamas. (6/12) Bob also quotes the Reut Institute's Gidi Grinstein* to the effect that the Left (aka Ariel Sharon) gave the Palestinians Gaza, but hey, all peace-loving Israelis got was terror. (7/12) Such diversity of thought! No wonder Bob describes "radio journalist" Yaron Deckel as "brilliant." He wasn't singing from the same songsheet as EK and GG. No siree, Bob! He told Bob, in effect, we gave the Palestinians everything - Camp David, disengagement from Gaza, comprehensive negotiations, summits, cups of tea - but hey, all peace-loving Israelis got was... nothing! Nothing good, that is. (8/12). Oh yeah, and as a man with an eye for the best and the brightest, Bob reckons Thomas Friedman's "one of the best of the US commentators" and "very good on the Middle East." In his blog, he quotes Friedman to the effect that we Americans gave the Palestinians and the Israelis megabucks and assurances galore, but hey, all peace-loving Americans got was... nothing! Nothing. Full stop. (14/12)]

"'They had a real cultural, business and political tour of Israel', Jacobs said. They met Supreme Court judges, they met the Minister of Economics. It was amazing - I went on it [the tour] and I discovered things that I hadn't seen or heard of before'. Ernst & Young tax partner and AICC board member Alf Capito said the mission 'exceeded his expectations greatly'. 'It was an intense and, in the time allowed, incredibly informative immersion into the history, psyche, entrepreneurship and God-given [!] resilience of Israel and its people', he said... The plan is for the tour to become a yearly event, with Carr already expressing his desire to take part again."

Of course he'll take part again. He's perfect for the job. As an Australian Labor leader (or ex- in his case) he's committed body & soul to Israel. Of the Palestinians, he writes in his blog that "[t]he right of return is their deeper desire and would, of course, be seen as unacceptable by any Israeli government." (6/12) That's the bottom line for these types. Not is it right, but is it acceptable to the Israelis?

[*For those of you who've not yet had the honour and privilege of meeting GG and his tankthink, the Reut Institute, see my 13/1/10 post Getting It Reut.]

Zionists Say the Darndest Things

Still crazy after all these years:

"I believed that if we crave life in the Mideast arena, we have to sometimes just 'go crazy'." Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz speaking on the third anniversary of Israel's 2006 rampage in Lebanon (Halutz: Sometimes you just have to 'go crazy', ynetnews.com, 12/7/09)

Narcissism on steroids:

"There are now many Iraqis embedded with US forces in Kirkuk. In the dining hall on the main base, I like to watch the Iraqi officers watching the melting pot of US soldiers around them - men, women, blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics - and wonder: What have they learned from us? We left some shameful legacies here of torture and Abu Ghraib, but we also left a million acts of kindness and a profound example of how much people of different backgrounds can accomplish when they work together." New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (Goodbye Iraq, and good luck, 15/7/09)

It's us & them:

"Me? Brute force? I thought I was actually sensitive. In national and international issues, force is also a language. But I do not like wars between Jews. I prefer to direct the brute-force energies within me at the goyim." Netanyahu's National Security Adviser Uzi Arad (There is no Palestinian Sadat, no Palestinian Mandela, Haaretz, Ari Shavit, 16/7/09)

In your dreams:

"[P]ossibly someone might come along and say 'I am an engineer of events; the depth doesn't interest me - I am going to produce an event'. And within 3 years - presto - 4 Annapolises, 2 disengagements, global pyrotechnics. And then, suddenly, in 2015, there is a Palestinian state. Stamps, parades, carnival. That could happen. A fragile structure, yes; an arrangement resting wholly on wobbly foundations. But it could happen. There could be a Palestinian state." (ibid)

It's Dr Strangelove all over again:

"[Herman] Kahn is the original Dr Strangelove. He was a Jewish-American genius who was a salient nuclear hawk and dealt with the planning and feasability of nuclear wars... He attracted a group of devotees of whom I was one in the 1970s... Like Kahn, I was one of the hawks. One of my projects was a paper for the Pentagon on planning a limited nuclear war in Central Europe." (ibid)

Only the lonely:

"We are always alone. Sometimes we have partners and lovers and donors of money, but no one is in our shoes." (ibid)

Australia's Thomas Friedman?

"Is there anything more annoying than a Western correspondent parachuting into a foreign country and offering, only hours after his arrival, words of wisdom and analysis about that country? And who can compete with Thomas Friedman* in that regard? Really. He said: "First, a solid majority of Lebanese Christians voted against the list of Michel Aoun, who wanted to align their community with the Shiite Hezbollah party, and tacitly Iran, because he viewed them as best able to protect Christian interests - not the West." Of course, he was wrong... not only did Aoun remain the person with the largest Christian bloc in parliament (in fact, his bloc expanded from 2005) but he received 50% (versus 49%) of the Christian vote nationwide. And, in the key areas where Aoun lost, such as Zahle, it was due to Sunni votes... He then said: "Second, a solid majority of all Lebanese - Muslims, Christians and Druse - voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri , the son of the slain Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri." Well, sorry to disappoint, but if you measure the popular vote, it was in favor of the opposition: "the 'losers' got 54.8% of the total vote (839,371) and the 'winners' 45.2% (692,285)."** He then adds: "Ballots were the only weapons the March 14 coalition had against an Iran-Hezbollah-Syria alliance..." Well, yes, ballots and: 1) Saudi & Western money; 2) acute sectarian mobilization and agitation that would have made Zarqawi proud; 3) Hariri money; 4) intervention by the Lebanese president against Aoun; 5) intervention by the Maronite church in favor of March 14... He then said: "I watched the voting at a school in Brummana. People came by car, by wheelchair, by foot - young, old and sick." Don't get me wrong: Thomas Friedman can only write recycled cliches, but could you find a more hackneyed cliche about an election than this one?" (Thomas Friedman in Beirut, The Angry Arab News Service, 10/6/09)

[*New York Times columnist. Friedman often crops up in The Sydney Morning Herald, most recently on 5/6/09;**Ah, that damned popular vote, friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com, 9/6/09]

But don't worry, we have our own Thomas Friedmans. Some gems from The Australian's Middle East correspondent John Lyons, 'reporting' from Beirut (Vote for bombs or business, 13/6/09):-

"... the 40,000 missiles that Hezbollah claims to have along the border with Israel..." Hang on, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, your foreign editor, said on 11/6/o9 that it was 50,000 (A new cold war in the Mid-East). Do I hear 60,000?

"Lebanon... voted to keep Hezbollah from formally taking control in a country awash with weapons. The result highlights two Lebanons: the victorious March 14 Alliance, led by Saad Hariri, which is popular among young Lebanese who want to engage with the world, and the defeated March 8 Alliance whose support base, Hezbollah, is made up of fundamentalist Shi'ite Muslims who look to Iran for religious and financial support." How to explain then that 50.3% of Christians, 25% of Sunnis, and 30% of Druse voted for March 8? (Brilliant insights on Lebanon from Elliot Abrams, The Angry Arab News Service, 13/6/09)

"The two Lebanons are obvious to see when The Inquirer takes a tour of one of Hezbollah's strongholds, the southern suburbs of Beirut. Leaving the city we drive past the Sabra & Shatila camps for Palestinian refugees, made famous in 1982 after 800 Palestinians were massacred there by militia allied to Israel." Alas, the most definitive study of the massacre to date - Sabra & Shatila: September 1982 (2004) by Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout -estimates 3,500 victims. So here's the trick: If it's Hamas/Hezbollah rockets, the sky's the limit. If it's Palestinian/Lebanese victims of Israeli aggression, no number is too low.

"Pacifist Hezbollah is not." Pacifist Israel is...???

"While Nasrallah, with his firebrand speeches vowing wrath on Israel...." How impressive! Lyons of Lebanon has not only mastered Arabic, but he's actually heard/read all of Hassan Nasrallah's speeches!

"Although the location of Nasrallah's home is secret because of fears that the Israelis want to kill him, one local tells me he knows where it is, then takes me down a side street. Uniformed Hezbollah soldiers sitting on the corners of an otherwise abandoned block suggest someone of importance is being guarded."Lyons puts Mossad to shame. His talents are obviously wasted at The Australian. He should be put on the trail of Osama bin Laden immediately.

"The enthusiastic local takes me past Hezbollah's military headquarters... Around here are dozens of new buildings that have replaced those bombed by Israel in 2006. Iranian funding is obvious from the many buildings displaying Iranian names." Amaazing! Lyons is also fluent in Farsi!