Israel tasked with spying on Americans - Bamford

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=75 ... id=3510203


'Israel tasked with spying on Americans'
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:58:35 GMT


Bamford says concerns over the relationship between Israeli spy agencies and the FBI 'greatly increased following disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping operations'.
The US entrusted Israeli intelligence services with spying on Americans after the 9/11 attacks, an intelligence journalist has revealed.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the White House launched a massive program to spy on millions of Americans, best-selling author James Bamford has claimed in his latest book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

According to the author, the National Security Agency (NSA) was tasked with monitoring 'billions of private hard-line, cell, and wireless telephone conversations; text, e-mail and instant Internet messages; Web-page histories, faxes, and computer hard drives'.

The two largest American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon collaborated with the NSA, assisting the federal government in eavesdropping on their customers.

Bamford maintains that the bugging of the entire two networks, 'carrying billions of American communications every day', were handed to two companies founded in Israel.

Verint and Narus, the two Israeli corporations, are 'super intrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7,' and sifting traffic at 'key Internet gateways' around the US, Bamford claims.

"The greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies," Bamford writes.

According to Electronic Intifada, there has yet to be a congressional oversight of the Israeli intelligence-linked firms operating in the heart of the US security establishment.

[AlicetheKurious]

I can't help wondering if people who get all worked up over the word "ZOG" have any outrage left over for this sort of thing?

The US entrusted Israeli intelligence services with spying on Americans...

Verint and Narus, the two Israeli corporations, are 'super intrusive -- conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7,' and sifting traffic at 'key Internet gateways' around the US, Bamford claims.

"The greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies," Bamford writes.

According to Electronic Intifada, there has yet to be a congressional oversight of the Israeli intelligence-linked firms operating in the heart of the US security establishment.

[2012 Countdown]

Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as "the eavesdropping capital of the world." Although there is no way to prove cooperation, Bamford writes that "the greatest potential beneficiaries of this marriage between the Israeli eavesdroppers and America's increasingly centralized telecom grid are Israel's intelligence agencies."

Israel's spy agencies have long had a revolving-door relationship with Verint and Narus and other Israeli military-security firms. The relationship is particularly close between the firms and Israel's own version of the NSA, called "Unit 8200." After the 11 September attacks, Israeli companies seeking a share of massively expanded US intelligence budgets formed similarly incestuous relationships with some in the American intelligence establishment: Ken Minihan, a former director of the NSA, served on Verint's "security committee" and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official responsible for liaison with the telecom industry became head of the Verint unit that sold eavesdropping equipment to the FBI and NSA.

Bamford writes that "concern over the cozy relationship between the [FBI] and Verint greatly increased following disclosure of the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping operations. At the same time that the tappers and the agents have grown uncomfortably close, the previous checks and balances, such as the need for a FISA warrant, have been eliminated."

http://www.countercurrents.org/abunimah051108.htm

[NeonLX]

But...but...but...we are the good guys, us and Israel. And if y'ain't doin' nuttin' wrong, then ya don't got nuttin' to worry about, y'see.

[ultramegagenius]

the fact that Israel was "tasked" with the collections dirty work should tell you a lot about the dynamics of power involved. one of the principle reasons client states are maneuvered into acting as cut-outs in the first place is to increase the plausible deniability of the hegemon's involvement and to maintain the client in a degraded status of dependence.

as Naomi Klein eloquently writes,

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2007/06/laboratory-fortressed-world

Israel has been positioned as a pre-eminent post-modern security state. the more they are pilloried for their ruthless suppression of the Palestinians, the fewer options they have except to specialize in the technology of suppression as a livelihood. on a certain level, we've turned them out.

this has been in the making since they helped get our Thor missiles to Iran, or back when Kissinger goaded them into attacking Egypt to jump-start the last major financial re-organization. if it weren't for the Yanks mimicking age-old British ambitions in the Middle-East, would the Western powers ever have been so forgiving of Israeli aggression in UN forums? whatever influence PNAC may have over congress, they're naught but facilitating the imperial objectives that underpin the 'clash of civilizations' and Israel's charmed existence originally.

i still find the globalist thesis the most plausible, according to which Bush/Hayden types in league with Verint, Narus, et al. are mutually relying on each other to screw over their domestic populations. i don't see either state's hegemony being particularly more effective or insidious than the others'.

[hava1]

Good summation. the tellecom situation is a good metaphor for the relations. Israel performs the classic jewish role for the hegemons.

However, in my mind, there is still a margin of discretion to israeli leadership, to mitigate the bad intent. Instead, they seem to immerse in the corruption , and to ignore the script, which has repeated itself through our history.

Those individuals or groups that sold out, are accountable, regardless of the "dynamics" described here. What Klein knows, they know too. And yet the fail again, with dire consequence for an already severely damaged nation.

----
Haaretz today - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1038978.html






Last update - 02:19 21/11/2008


Defense Min. turns blind eye as Israelis sell arms to enemies

By Yossi Melman

Tags: Defense Ministry, arms trade

Israeli arms dealers have negotiated and sold military equipment to a number of countries defined by Israeli law as enemy states in recent years with the full acknowledgment and approval of the Defense Ministry, Haaretz has learned.

The ministry has okayed negotiations and sales between Israeli dealers and several Arab states including Iraq, Libya and Yemen, say the sources.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz recently approved the Tel Aviv District State Prosecutor's Office decision to close an investigation against dual Israel-U.S. citizen Shlomi Michaels, whose company, the Kurdistan Development Organization (KODO), was suspected of illegal arms deals with Iraq.
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A police spokesman confirmed they had opened an investigation into Michaels dealings in 2006. Michael's company Kodo used to be partly owned by former MK Dani Yatom, who is also a former head of the Mossad secret service. The police spokesman stressed that at no point in the investigation was Yatom questioned or considered a suspect. Yatom said that he severed his ties to the company in 2002, when he was elected to the Knesset, and before the company began its dealings in Iraq. Michaels, a former member of the elite Yamam police unit, emigrated to the U.S., where he started Kodo, which is registered as a company in Switzerland.

The investigation began on the basis of information that equipment manufactured by Israeli companies like Magal Motorola and Tadiran were being used in the construction of an airport in the city of Arbil, in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and that Kodo's security advisers were training local Kurdish militias. Laura Rozen wrote this week in Mother Jones, a U.S. weekly, that Kodo was vying for a 20 percent stake of a $300 million budget. Its activity in the Kurdish territory ended after it received information that Iranian agents might try to harm Israelis.

Police began investigating the company after it discovered it did not receive approval from the Defense Ministry to operate in Iraq, which is still technically in a state of war with Israel. The ministry's former director general, Amos Yaron, told police he had approved the company's dealings.

Haaretz recently learned that the Defense Ministry allowed Israeli dealers to sell flak jackets to Libya and weapons to Yemen. In the past, the ministry allowed the Israel Aerospace Industries to enter negotiations with Yemen over its Mig-fighter planes but the deal fell through.

According to a 1939 law drafted under the British Mandate as a way to supervise trade with Nazi Germany, the Finance Ministry is charged with defining countries as enemy states. However, any government ministry may de facto approve trade deals with enemy states based on its own definition of the term.

"International law or Israeli law is not clear over the definition of an enemy state," Ehud Keinan, the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, admitted in 1999. Iraq's classification as an enemy state was removed after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003. Since then Israeli companies have supplied the U.S. army in Iraq with drones and ammunition.

The Defense Ministry spokesman responded that "the Defense Ministry obeys the law but does not comment on defense industry trade."

Related articles:

Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran

Israel and Azerbaijan close multi-million dollar arms deal

Indian gov't okays over $1.5 billion in arms deals with Israel



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[slimmouse]

the fact that Israel was "tasked" with the collections dirty work should tell you a lot about the dynamics of power involved. one of the principle reasons client states are maneuvered into acting as cut-outs in the first place is to increase the plausible deniability of the hegemon's involvement and to maintain the client in a degraded status of dependence.
.

Excellent summation.

The empire has this off to a tee. They get all the information regardless - remember what sibel Edmunds said ? about intel/drugs/arm/terrorism all meeting at the same point ?

Meanwhile ;

Organised religion anyone ?

First this ;




Anything up to five times a day, depending on the religious software programme you happen to have downloaded.

followed of course by this ;



except of course the weapons involved are a tad more sophisticated - The cavalry a lot more savage , and the millions of innocent dead a lot more real - accompanied by a tangential increase in profits for the controllers.

Meanwhile, in the ordinary domain of discussion we have ;


resulting in ;

[AlicetheKurious]

the fact that Israel was "tasked" with the collections dirty work should tell you a lot about the dynamics of power involved. one of the principle reasons client states are maneuvered into acting as cut-outs in the first place is to increase the plausible deniability of the hegemon's involvement and to maintain the client in a degraded status of dependence.

as Naomi Klein eloquently writes,

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2007/06/laboratory-fortressed-world

Israel has been positioned as a pre-eminent post-modern security state. the more they are pilloried for their ruthless suppression of the Palestinians, the fewer options they have except to specialize in the technology of suppression as a livelihood. on a certain level, we've turned them out.

this has been in the making since they helped get our Thor missiles to Iran, or back when Kissinger goaded them into attacking Egypt to jump-start the last major financial re-organization. if it weren't for the Yanks mimicking age-old British ambitions in the Middle-East, would the Western powers ever have been so forgiving of Israeli aggression in UN forums? whatever influence PNAC may have over congress, they're naught but facilitating the imperial objectives that underpin the 'clash of civilizations' and Israel's charmed existence originally.

i still find the globalist thesis the most plausible, according to which Bush/Hayden types in league with Verint, Narus, et al. are mutually relying on each other to screw over their domestic populations. i don't see either state's hegemony being particularly more effective or insidious than the others'.

That's pretty twisted logic, there, "ultramegagenius" -- guess what, folks, Israel is the VICTIM here, yet again!! Poor little tykes, the "more they're pilloried for their ruthless suppression of the Palestinians, the fewer options they have except to specialize in the technology of suppression as a livelihood. on a certain level, we've turned them out." Awww.

...the fact that Israel was "tasked" with the collections dirty work should tell you a lot about the dynamics of power involved.

So the Israelis AREN'T bribing American security officials with plum jobs in exchange for their collaboration with Israeli spying, even though that's what the evidence suggests?

...Israeli companies seeking a share of massively expanded US intelligence budgets formed similarly incestuous relationships with some in the American intelligence establishment: Ken Minihan, a former director of the NSA, served on Verint's "security committee" and the former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official responsible for liaison with the telecom industry became head of the Verint unit that sold eavesdropping equipment to the FBI and NSA.

Perfect, brainwashed logic.

[Canadian_watcher]

RFID for the Military

VUANCE

vuance's people

VUANCE is an Israeli Company

[hava1]

My ex (abusive) husband was working in 1997 or so on these patents with American corp (I think ericson? not sure, from TX). THe ISraelis were doing the experiments during terror attecks, and i hate to say that since I saw this "business" i lost even my trust in the veracity of "terror bombs",or part of them. At least in one case, i have reason to suspect the terror bombs were known to Israeli security (in Jerusalem) and not prevented or no warning.

{BTW, the same claims were made re another terror bombing in jerusalem, by some cofffe shop owner, who dug into things and found out what you are not supposed to know or ask. Since then he lost all his money (his was millionnaire) is homeless . Recent TV program brought his story in prime time. what caught my attention was his claims at the time, that the authorities knew about the bombers, and the precise location and LIHOPed. (It was his coffee shop that blew up).}

THis is BIG BIG money stuff, huge money involved tnat this has in fact shattered the entity called "Israel" to individuals and pirate groups that prey on each other, and compete over those bids.
My ex husband was on the lookout for "guinea pigs" to test RFID technology on Cell phones, with some satelite orso, that was pretty novel those days.

Same goes for Telcom tapping etc. Kobi Alexander, nice example.He is now in NAmibia...will probably not be extradited, so he is in fact serving time in Namibia, cannot leave this place for years. Very convenient for everyone.

I am far from defending the ...well, Nazi Israelis who engage in the dirty work for US gov, and while doing that harm and actually enslave and selltheir OWN people. I will not see them as victims, they willingly jump into the sewage, for BIG bucks. But on the whole, the final power and responsibilty lies in the US gov decisions.

I brought the Zvi Migdal link in another thread, just to point to the cancerous dynamics of crime orgnaizations and how if allowed to metastise they infect larger and larger circles of society, government etc.

http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2000039657
(WO/2000/039657) ELECTRONIC COUPONING SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR USE OF SAMEBiblio. Data Description Claims National PhaseNoticesDocuments Latest bibliographic data on file with the International Bureau
Permanent LinkBookmark this page
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pub. No.: WO/2000/039657 International Application No.: PCT/IL1999/000703
Publication Date: 06.07.2000 International Filing Date: 27.12.1999
Chapter 2 Demand Filed: 26.07.2000

IPC: G06Q 30/00 (2006.01), G07G 1/00 (2006.01)
Applicants: GREENBERG, Hanan [IL/IL]; 87 Brenner Street 46427 Herzlia (IL).
NAHIR, Hagay [IL/IL]; 143 Habsor Street 73142 Shoham (IL).
NAHEAR, Shimon [IL/IL]; 143 Habsor Street 73142 Shoham (IL).
Inventors: GREENBERG, Hanan; 87 Brenner Street 46427 Herzlia (IL).
NAHIR, Hagay; 143 Habsor Street 73142 Shoham (IL).
NAHEAR, Shimon; 143 Habsor Street 73142 Shoham (IL).
Agent: EITAN, PEARL, LATZER & COHEN-ZEDEK; 2 Gav Yam Center Shenkar Street 7 46725 Herzlia (IL).
Priority Data: 127748 27.12.1998 IL

Title: ELECTRONIC COUPONING SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR USE OF SAME

Abstract:
There is disclosed a system and method for distributing and redeeming electronic coupons. Initially, data corresponding to a coupon (25) is created and placed into a database (24). This coupon data is transmitted over a radio communication network, such as a cellular communication network, to at least one mobile station, such as a cellular telephone (30), pager or the like. The coupon is then accessed on the mobile station, and upon its redemption, a signal corresponding thereto is transmitted to the database (24). The database (24) then responds by transmitting data to the mobile station resulting in the ensure, cancellation or decrementation of the redeemed coupon from the mobile station.

Designated States: AE, AL, AM, AT, AU, AZ, BA, BB, BG, BR, BY, CA, CH, CN, CR, CU, CZ, DE, DK, DM, EE, ES, FI, GB, GD, GE, GH, GM, HR, HU, ID, IL, IN, IS, JP, KE, KG, KP, KR, KZ, LC, LK, LR, LS, LT, LU, LV, MA, MD, MG, MK, MN, MW, MX, NO, NZ, PL, PT, RO, RU, SD, SE, SG, SI, SK, SL, TJ, TM, TR, TT, TZ, UA, UG, US, UZ, VN, YU, ZA, ZW.
African Regional Intellectual Property Org. (ARIPO) (GH, GM, KE, LS, MW, SD, SL, SZ, TZ, UG, ZW)
Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO) (AM, AZ, BY, KG, KZ, MD, RU, TJ, TM)
European Patent Office (EPO) (AT, BE, CH, CY, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, IE, IT, LU, MC, NL, PT, SE)
African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) (BF, BJ, CF, CG, CI, CM, GA, GN, GW, ML, MR, NE, SN, TD, TG).
Publication Language: English (EN)
Filing Language:


---
that's one of the commercial byproducts, my ex is one of the applicants (Shimon Nahear).

[Canadian_watcher]

it's an important distinction - that there are crime syndicates in government (every government, I'd imagine) and then there are the people of the country & gov't NOT involved in the syndicate.

When I posted the info about VUANCE, it wasn't to impugn Israel, but to have ppl take a look at the players. Their US site is in Virginia (I think) and the US players are well connected to intelligence, etc, which on the one hand is logical for the company, and on the other hand is a harbinger of possible trouble.

[ultramegagenius]

obviously we disagree Alice, but i will offer a final defense of my perspective. first and foremost, i believe there are many different lenses with which to view the situation, each offering a different angle on the truth. due to the interdependence and fluidity of things, these angles cannot all be reconciled into one simple narrative.

--on one level we have the world of personal ambition, where petty greed entices men like Minihan to chase after ever more dollars and shekels. here we can also find the Larry Franklins committing treason and the Wolfowitz's formulating criminal policy architectures. they see their advancement and pursue it with whatever ideological or worldly tools are ready-to-hand.

--on the next level we have institutions such as AIPAC and the Pentagon, as well as meta-institutional conglomerates such as this or that state apparatus. these bodies float along, sometimes by their own inertia and sometimes by the force of their activist constituents. although their charters often list some grandiose goals, ultimately their own continuation will always trump other concerns. if they achieved all their goals, their reason-d'etre would vanish.

--in a hybrid zone between states, parties, business, and civil society at large, there are criminal associations that will pervert men and institutions alike without ever admitting such in public. this is the stuff of deep politics, where allegiance to nation, race, honest earnings, and religion are conveniently discarded as men and organizations are compartmentalized and privately subjugated to their controllers receding into the shadows. deep politics, by the nature of its duplicity and fealty, defies the logic of personal ambition as well as nation-states, which are comparatively straightforward. in the underworld, every member is permanently at risk of betrayal, and trust of any kind becomes a liability. not everyone who is ambitious is a member of the underworld, but many naive people do its bidding.

--if we try to write history, we will have to allude to various agents and actors drawn from the preceding categories. we should also consider various economic, social, scientific, military, commercial and cultural factors, etc., in order to draw out the reasons why agents were motivated as they were and what enabled the outcomes. the historical lens is prone to assumption and supposition, limited by what we can agree constitutes evidence. it nevertheless provides the background for the major objective conditions that are impacting interactions in the market, the polis, and the bureaucracy. we can draw safer conclusions by focusing on each of those more limited conditioning factors individually.

basically, to say that Israel is a victim is to confute the small-scale people world with the more complex system of nation-states. they have been allowed to perform an anachronistic role in the Middle-East, advancing a system of apartheid and settlement that is strikingly crude by pre-Bush standards. over time this indulgence has made Israel into a place where extreme rhetoric and Orwellian technology have both flourished. although those are the facts, i don't think you can claim that they are engineering the collapse of liberal-capitalism in order to sell their toys or accomplish other idealistic aims. nobody's that well organized! capitalism is naturally prone to crises, and the right wing elements in many countries have exploited every crisis to promote their own authority and engage in rounds of primitive accumulation. to the extent that this is criminal, it tends to become unnaturally centralized and counter to the interests of legitimate bodies.

although some connected people are landing plum jobs in Israel's security sector, you have to remember that that sector is recycling billions of dollars in aide money doled out to them by the U.S. The historical fact is that the Western powers created and nurtured Israel as a bridgehead for non-semitic penetration of the Middle-East. once in a while they have to remind us that we "need" them there, but in the final analysis the historical momentum they are riding is one of external incursion from the Great Powers into that region. their founding myth was a convenient religious spur to maintain that project after the Brits' ignominious exit.

it would help clarify things if you look at some of the systems in play in Washington. as Sibel Edmonds pointed out, a section of the Turkish elite is also quite active in promoting its agenda there. and so is big Pharma, and Wall St., and Big Oil, and ... you get the idea. we live in a system where policy is auctioned to the highest bidder, and this is the product of 2 centuries of defending white male class privilege throughout the North American experiment. to somehow single out this name, "Israel" and impute it to a monolithic entity and then to ascribe all known ills to this mythical entity is ludicrous.

[Canadian_watcher]

yes, I can see that ^^
the parents who spoil their kids rotten , whose kids go out and beat the shit out of every other kid whose parents taught them right from wrong.. in a way those bully kids are victims.
UNTIL they grow up.
then what?
Israel has 'grown up.'
They are no longer victims, for they choose their own destiny. They are masters of their domain. it is fair to separate their past from their present and to hold them accountable as an independent state for their actions.

that's why I think Holocaust education in every school is a terrible thing. therein lies the key to perpetuating the idea that Israel the country is really a collection of victimized Jewsih people who deserve international sympathy.

[AlicetheKurious]

Canadian_Watcher said:

Israel has 'grown up.'
They are no longer victims, for they choose their own destiny. They are masters of their domain. it is fair to separate their past from their present and to hold them accountable as an independent state for their actions.

The zionists were never victims -- they were the parasites that exploited the victimization of the Jewish people under the Nazis for their own ends, and they have continued to do so ever since. Only the zionists could get away with dangerous medical experiments on Jewish and Arab guinea pigs, including intentionally exposing Jewish children to fatal levels of radiation (the "Ringworm Experiments"), for money. It was the zionists who used terrorist bombs and fake terrorist attacks to get Jewish Arabs to leave their homes in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere in order to populate their "Jewish state". It was the zionists who collaborated with the Nazis (the Ha'avara or Transfer Agreement) in order to force Jews to emigrate to Palestine. It was the zionists who abused their influence during WWII to make sure that Jews fleeing Nazi Germany would have no choice but to go to Palestine: either that, or die.

And it is the zionists who have made a lot of money, hundreds of billions of dollars, by cynically appointing themselves "the heirs" of the Nazi's victims!!! Who else could get away with using Holocaust reparation money to support a luxurious lifestyle, while Holocaust survivors struggle in poverty? What a scam!

Throughout their history, the zionists have fed on Jewish victimization, on Jewish and Arab blood. It's a testament to the genius of their propaganda that they've managed to identify THEMSELVES with their own victims, those they've so cynically exploited for tremendous profit.

Back to this thread's topic: the zionist organized crime network may be headquartered in the zionist state, but it is nourished through its tentacles embedded at the decision-making levels in most Western capitals, and here, and here, particularly those with a global sphere of influence already in place. Israeli agents have also consistently been very active in the support for Third World dictatorships, forming the basis of a very lucrative trade in Israeli arms, drugs, and various kinds of favors from Western governments. Without these tentacles, it would quickly die.

(Regarding the OP, for another example of how the foxes are appointed to guard the henhouse in the U.S., see Lieberman Keeps Homeland Security Chairmanship, Homeland Security Training in Israel, as well as an interesting expose of Mossad agents' inexplicable immunity with U.S. law enforcement under the Chertoff-led Department of Homeland Security).

The means by which these tentacles are embedded and kept in place include blackmail and here (and here), bribery, media attacks or fawning and threats or outright assassination, to position zionist agents strategically. That is why it is so vital to the zionist organized crime network to maintain a sophisticated system of global espionage and media control. But how to hide the gorilla in the room? That is where, once again, the zionist conflation of their criminal network with "the Jewish people" comes in handy, by which any attack against the zionist criminal network is automatically converted into a "racist" attack on Jewish people!!!

Man, they're good.

[American Dream]

Alice, thank you for the post above. It is chock-full of valuable citations which do highlight very real crimes of the Israeli State and the deep power structure associated with it. One of the sources used- Christopher Bollyn at the American Free Press, I could probably do without, but the rest is excellent, most especially to me the citation on Israeli support for Third World dictatoships (The Israeli Connection By Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi).

Where I am a little concerned about your line is on your emphasis on "the Zionists". You said above:

Only the zionists could get away with dangerous medical experiments on Jewish and Arab guinea pigs, including intentionally exposing Jewish children to fatal levels of radiation (the "Ringworm Experiments"), for money. It was the zionists who used terrorist bombs and fake terrorist attacks to get Jewish Arabs to leave their homes in Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere in order to populate their "Jewish state". It was the zionists who collaborated with the Nazis (the Ha'avara or Transfer Agreement) in order to force Jews to emigrate to Palestine. It was the zionists who abused their influence during WWII to make sure that Jews fleeing Nazi Germany would have no choice but to go to Palestine: either that, or die.


Things get a little sticky here because while the above crimes were indeed committed by Israel ("the Zionist State") and/or individuals who may well have called themselves Zionists, it is not as if they were directly and equally perpetrated by all people who would claim the label "Zionist".

To illustrate my point, I will adapt what you wrote to apply to citizens of "my" neo-colonialist state, the USA. While the adaptation is not perfect, as Zionism is more of a concretized ideology than "Americanism", I think my point should be clear just the same:

Only the Americans could get away with dangerous medical experiments on foreign and domestic guinea pigs, including intentionally exposing children to the most destructive forms of abuse, for money. It was the Americans who use and have used terrorist bombs and fake terrorist attacks to dominate and exploit, and previously did so in order to populate their "American state". It was the Americans who collaborated with the Nazis to fuel a world war, and in order to force the Jews who were not exterminated to emigrate to Palestine. It was the Americans who abused their influence during WWII to make sure that Jews fleeing Nazi Germany would have no choice but to go to Palestine: either that, or die.

Is my meaning clear?

In other words, the "American State", and the deep power structure associated with it has committed great crimes, but it is not true that all who call themselves "Americans" are necessarily directly and equally responsible for those crimes.

In a similar way, when you talk about "Zionists", this term may obscure the differences between, say, an architect of Israeli State policy who previously was an Irgun terrorist, a recent Russian immigrant to Israel who wanted to get out of the old country but had no other options, a Christian Zionist, an American neo-Con politician who is not Jewish and does not "believe" in Zionism, and a Canadian Jew who likes the idea of Israel's existence but is in no way politically active.

As not all of these people are equally culpable, and indeed, we must add into this some institutional analysis to explain why all sorts people play the roles they do within a socially unjust arrangement!


I think there may be an issue here about the significance of Zionists and Zionism and, with all due respect, I want to clarify one lingering doubt I have. In an earlier thread I said: I definitively reject the concepts of "ZOG", "The Elders of Zion", and the premise that the Israeli State runs the U.S.

Later you responded and, if I understand correctly, you said that you do think the idea of the United States as being controlled by "ZOG" i.e. a Zionist Occupation Government, does apply, and that you are personally OK with the term "ZOG". However, you didn't say anything at all about the Elders of Zion mythos.

Obviously, I find the "Elders of Zion" idea to be a pile of crap, and I think the associated ideas about Jewish conspiracy matter a great deal, as they can really muddy the waters when we allude to "Zionist conspiracies".

Alice, I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter.