October 01, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" -
It is
interesting to note how the Israel Lobby is able to
manage and contain the commentary of groups in
America that might normally be critical of Israeli
policies vis-à-vis the United States.
A recent article by Professor Andrew Bacevich
entitled “President Trump, Please End the American
Era in the Middle East” is a good example of how
self-censorship by authors works. The piece appeared
as one of Bacevich’s regular weekly contributions to
The American Conservative website under the
rubric “Realism and Restraint.”
The article particularly
focused on the foreign policy pronouncements of Bret
Stephens, the resident neocon who writes for The
New York Times. Stephens, per Bacevich, has
been urging constant war in the Middle East and
worrying lest “we may be witnessing the
beginning of the end of the American era in the
Middle East.” Bacevich, unlike Stephens, is a
genuine foreign policy expert, a realist, an Army
veteran, and always quite sensible. He correctly
described how “in the Middle East, the military
power of the United States has played a large part
in exacerbating problems rather than contributing to
their solution.”
The overall message is sound,
but in this case, it is interesting to note what
Bacevich left out rather than what he included. It
is easy to understand the “realism” part when he
writes and it is sometimes also possible to perceive
the “restraint.” He cited Iran seven times as well
as Saudi Arabia, but, strangely enough, he never
mentioned Israel at all, which a number of
commenter's on the piece noted. It rather suggests
that there is a line that Bacevich is reluctant to
cross. The omission is particularly odd as Israel is
absolutely central to and might even be described as
driving American policy in the Middle East and Bret
Stephens, whom Bacevich excoriates, is a notable
Israel-firster who once worked as the editor of the
Jerusalem Post. Almost everything Stephens
writes is basically a promotion of Israel and its
interests coupled with a call for the United States
to do what it must to attack and destroy the Jewish
state’s principal perceived enemy Iran.
The reticence is perhaps
understandable as Bacevich is president of a newly
organized group called the Quincy Institute for
Responsible Statecraft, which
I have written about previously, that will have
its official launch in November. It claims to
promote “ideas that move U.S. foreign policy away
from endless war and toward vigorous diplomacy in
the pursuit of international peace” and further
takes some pride in being non-partisan though
bipartisan might be a better description. To be
sure, Quincy’s two major donors are the highly
controversial George Soros on the globalist left and
the equally notorious Koch Foundation on the
libertarian-lite right, which leads one to wonder
who is ordering the restraint when it comes to
Israel. Or is it both of them as neither
organization, though very active in foreign policy,
has indicated any desire to seriously criticize the
many crimes of the Jewish state. I appear to have
accurately predicted in my earlier article on Quincy
that “…there will inevitably be major issues that
Quincy will be afraid to confront, including the
significant role played by Israel and its friends in
driving America’s interventionist foreign policy.”
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
Indeed, anyone
who wants to be a player in Washington
DC has to avoid the Israel hot wire.
That it should be so is a tribute to the
power of the Jewish lobby coupled with
the bulk support and Bible-belt votes of
its brain-dead Christian Zionist spear
carriers. Congress, once described by
Pat Buchanan as “Israeli-occupied
territory,” likewise knows whom not to
offend lest one be unemployed in the
next electoral cycle. That is why
criminalizing criticism of Israel or
support of a non-violent boycott of the
country are regularly introduced in
Congress and find themselves with more
than one hundred sponsors and
co-sponsors. Nearly two dozen such
pro-Israel bills are currently at
certain points in the legislative
process,
including one that will enable
aggrieved Israelis to sue the
Palestinian Authority (PA) in
sympathetic U.S. courts for damages, a
move that will potentially bankrupt the
PA.
And the colleges and
universities have not been immune from pressure to
conform to the pro-Israel narrative. The White House
acting through the Department of Education is
functioning as thought police on behalf of the
Jewish state. It is currently
planning on withholding some federal funding of
the University of North Carolina and Duke because
their joint Middle Eastern studies program does not
meet alleged government standards. The standards
involved relate to the fact that the program has had
speakers and course content that can be construed as
critical of Israel and friendly to Muslims. The
message clearly being sent to the schools by the
Trump Administration is that if you criticize the
Jewish state you will be punished.
The drive to eliminate any
pushback against Israeli actions at colleges has
been spearheaded by leading Zionist Kenneth L.
Marcus, who was appointed the Education Department’s
Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights. Marcus, who has
worked as a paid pro-Israel activist, has been
urging the government to define the BDS movement as
anti-Semitic and has used his office to designate
any Palestinian advocacy as a violation of Jewish
students’ civil rights.
The federal action to enforce
educational conformity on Israel is not exactly new
as universities have long since been self-censoring,
just like Bacevich, normally in response to
complaints by Jewish groups. To cite only one
example, in 2013, at nominally Catholic Fordham
University in New York City,
a student group sought to form a Students for
Justice in Palestine (SJP) club. Their paperwork
advised that their goal was to “build support in the
Fordham community among people of all ethnic and
religious backgrounds for the promotion of justice,
human rights, liberation and self-determination for
the indigenous Palestinian people.” The applicants
also revealed that they would support the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Three years
later, Fordham’s Dean of Education denied the
application because of the support for BDS. The
students took Fordham to court and in August of this
year, three years later, a New York judge finally
struck down the decision as “arbitrary
and capricious.”
So it took six years and a
lawsuit to enable a group of students to form a club
that was admittedly political in nature but
non-violent and welcoming of everyone. So much for
freedom of speech and association at America’s
colleges and universities when they run up against
the Israel wall.
What is less observed is how
Israel’s message is promoted at the state and local
levels. At the state level, anti-BDS legislation is
now the rule in 26 states, with some requiring
government employees to sign a pledge not to boycott
Israel. And the same thing is happening among Boards
of Education. Fourteen states now require holocaust
education, where students are compelled to read
fiction like Eli Wiesel’s “Night” while also
consuming the established and standard, largely
fabricated, account of what the so-called holocaust
was all about. In Virginia, for example,
a shadowy group called the Institute for
Curriculum Services (ICS), which is actually a
“partisan group with backing by state and local
Israel advocacy organizations,”
is seeking to change the information conveyed by
the history and social studies textbooks used in
K-12 classrooms across the state. ICS recommended
changes include: “1. Emphasizing Arab culpability
for crisis initiation leading to military action and
failure of peace efforts—and never Israeli
culpability, even when it is undisputed historic
fact. 2. Replacing the commonly used words of
“settlers” with “communities,” “occupation” with
“control of,” “wall” with “security fence,” and
“militant” with “terrorist.” 3. Referencing Israeli
claims such as “Israel annexed East Jerusalem” and
the Golan Heights as accepted facts without
referencing lack of official recognition by the
United Nations and most member nation states.”
The ICS is only
one example of the persistent Israel Lobby
brainwashing of the American public on behalf of the
Jewish state to completely alter the narrative about
what is going on in the Middle East. Taken all
together, the self-censorship of groups and
individuals that wish to remain viable by ignoring
the Israel problem, the criminalization of
non-violent movements like BDS, and the pressure on
universities and schools to conform with positive
narratives about Israel means that any genuine
understanding of that nation’s war crimes and crimes
against humanity will, unfortunately, remain on the
margins.
Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism
specialist and military intelligence officer of the
United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Philip is Executive
Director of the Council for the National Interest.
https://councilforthenationalinterest.org
Do
you agree or disagree? Post your comment here
==See Also==
Note To ICH Community
We ask that you assist us in
dissemination of the article published by
ICH to your social media accounts and post
links to the article from other websites.
Thank you for your support.
Peace and joy