Saturday, April 28, 2007

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE ARAB LOBBY

It has become commonplace for Israel's opponents to raise the spectre of the so-called Jewish/Israel Lobby, a not so shadowy group of activists who advocate for Israel in the ongoing conflict with its neighbours. Last year, two American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt produced a working paper claiming that "the United States has been willing to set aside its own security in to advance the interests of another state" and that American Middle East policy is driven primarily by the "Israel Lobby", a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction," and whose core is "American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel's interests." The claim that such a lobby exists and has wide ranging power has been parroted by anti-Israel activists in other parts of the world including in Australia.

A close examination of Mearsheimer and Walt's work disclosed numerous factual errors [click here and here for examples] and sloppy scholarship in general. Alan Dershowitz even challenged them to a debate on their paper - a challenge that was politely declined.

The noted Israeli historian Benny Morris, who was cited by Mearsheimer and Walt, completed the demolition of their study in an article published in the New Republic THE IGNORANCE AT THE HEART OF AN INNUENDO. And Now For Some Facts. Of course, the Jewish/Israel Lobby card continues to be played out vigorously to this very day and it's worth asking why is this so?

T
here is a myriad of interest groups with a multitude of agendas and varying shapes and sizes operating to influence government in the U.S and elsewhere. If there is any substance to the allegation that certain citizens subordinate the security of their own state to that of a foreign power, then the singling out of one group is problematic. Eitan Bornstein asked the question in the Michigan Israel Observer article referred to above, that "if 'The Israel Lobby' itself is overly influential, shouldn't the authors also be criticizing the lobbying industry as a whole?" If not, what does it say about the motives of people like Mearsheimer and Walt and their counterparts around the world?

The most influential player of the Jewish/Israel Lobby card in recent times is former United States President and a one time Yasser Arafat lobbyist, Jimmy Carter who has produced an appalling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Again, it was left to Dershowitz to expose Carter as being heavily in the pay of the Saudi Arabians in Ex-President for Sale. These revelations are nothing new; Carter has been lobbying for the Arab and Palestinian causes for a long time. Strangely enough, he only considers it wrong for people to advocate for Israel and has no problem advocating for the Palestinians even though they are governed by a party which the U.S has labelled a "terrorist organisation", which has a genocidal aims against Jews and seeks to bring down the American people. Like those other anti-Jewish/Israel lobbyists, Carter declined the opportunity for an open and fair public debate with Dershowitz. Why is it that so many of those who complain loudly about the stifling of debate, run scared when faced with the challenge to do exactly that?

In Carter's case, is it perhaps that he knows his book is based largely on a lie? After all, he freely admits in the book itself that Israel doesn't really practice apartheid although that fact didn't prevent him from using such its outrageously inappropriate title.

Carter turned up at the University of Iowa last week, well and truly on the campaign trail. "The main reason I came to Iowa is to make sure you knew you could shape an outcome in the 2008 presidential election … As long as American politicians are seen as 'knee-jerk supporters' of Israel, the country’s role as the principal Mideast peace broker will be endangered."

There's proof of the fact that not only are the millions of dollars being poured into Carter's foundation by the Saudis proving the worth of their weight in oil but that Carter himself is one of the most shameful hypocrites walking on the face of this earth today.

The Simon Weisenthal Centre has recently published a response setting out how Carter attacked his subject in a reckless manner without any apparent regard for the truth. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Major Fabrications and Distortions reveals the depth to which the former U.S President has fallen under the spell of the Arab Lobby and how his work reflects the naked bigotry of his attempt not only to undermine the Jewish State but also to influence the politics of his own country.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations fiirst of all on your excellent blog. You may be interested to know that Alan Dershowitz has recently written a further article exposing Carter snd some of those who fund him.

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28044

"Recent disclosures of Carter's extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it."


....

"And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially, I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School, Rachael Lea Fish showed me the facts.

They were staggering. I was amazed that in the twenty-first century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up, a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son, hosted speakers who called Jews "the enemies of all nations," attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States' own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a "fable." (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.)"


...

"In reading Carter's statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the nineteen thirties, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler's government became clear. Harvard of the nineteen thirties was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the twenty-first century has become complicit in evil."

...

"Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter's friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter "$500,000 to help the former president establish his center...[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter's different projects."

Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank, ostensibly the source of his funding, "the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists." BCCI isn't the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center "in 1993 alone...$7.6 million" as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. It's worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government's myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center's Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia."

...


"No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter.

The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter, not me, who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter's own standards, it would be almost economically "suicidal" for Carter "to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

By Carter's own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption."

...

Carter..."is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter's sad legacy."

H.J. Brookes

[Boston, Mass.]

Wilbur Post said...

Thank You for your support Mr. Brookes.

It may not surprise you that we have our own down here who follow the Mearsheimer and Walt line and who quote Carter's book extensively and give it their wholehearted support.

Some even write books about the subject and attack what they call our own Israel Lobby with as much venom as Carter uses to attack the U.S equivalent.

It may surprise you that one such writer has been nominated for a literary award but I'm sure that you would not be surprised if I told you that it contains as many errors in its opening half dozen pages as there are in Carter's entire book.