Nordic wrote:
So can someone tell me HOW this occurred? How did tiny little obnoxious Israel manage to grab the United States of America by the balls, cut them off, and put them in their freezer?
Alice, maybe you can help us out with that.
Because it seems that at some point it would be in America's best interest to call the bluff of this obnoxious fucking country and let it be destroyed by the Arabs. I mean, why not?
But no. Are Americans that cowardly that they'll let the threat of their dirty laundry being aired keep them basically slaves to these fucks?
I mean, if someone did that to me, I'd do a Letterman on them and just come out with it, and fucking beat the shit out of them.
I honestly don't get it. What does America GET out of this deal? Because it wouldn't do it if it didn't get something. What does America GET by selling its soul to this tiny despised state?
brainpanhandler said:
What America gets by aligning, arming and protecting Israel is a nuclear armed ally in the region. What America gets is a teleological manifest destiny excuse to keep what amounts to an enormous military base in the middle east. What America gets is a way to manipulate the religious right into believing that we have a god given mandate to be in the middle east.
bp, you're mixing things up. The last thing "America" wanted was a nuclear armed Israel, at least prior to the Kennedy assassination. JFK had become exasperated with the Israelis' lies about their nuclear weapons facilities (Dimona was a "textile factory") and had informed the Israelis that under no circumstances was Israel to have the bomb, setting a deadline for them to dismantle their nuclear facilities by the summer of 1963. Ben Gurion, who kept stalling until Kennedy called his bluff, resigned in impotent fury, after calling Kennedy an enemy of the Jewish people. By supporting the pretense that he did not receive Kennedy's harsh letter, and ensuring that Kennedy had no Israeli government with whom to communicate, Ben Gurion's resignation pushed back the deadline a few weeks, but Kennedy informed the Israelis that the final deadline would be in the fall. By all accounts, he was dead serious. By November 22, he was dead.
Incidentally, at the time he was killed, another Kennedy was fighting the zionists on another front: Attorney General Robert Kennedy had ordered the American Zionist Council, precursor of AIPAC, to register the organization as a foreign agency. By October 1963, the tension between the Kennedys and the zionists in America was almost as explosive as that between JFK and the Israeli government:
10/11/1963 DOJ Demand for AZC Registration "the Department expects a response from you within 72 hours with regard to this matter."
10/17/1963 J. Walter Yeagley notes of DOJ AZC meeting attended by Nicholas Katzenbach. "Judge Rifkind then made a plea for no registration, stating it was the opinion of most of the persons affiliated with the Council that such registration would be so publicized by the American Council on Judaism that it would eventually destroy the Zionist movement...he did not believe his clients would file any papers or sign any papers indicating that the organization was an agent of a foreign principal. I told him that any such information or material that is supplied on that basis would be made part of the Department's public files available for inspection by the public..."
http://irmep.org/ILA/AZCDOJ/default.asp
Interestingly, the conflict continued during Robert Kennedy's remaining 9 months as U.S. attorney general until his resignation in September 1964, when he was replaced with Nicholas Katzenbach, after which the matter was quietly dropped, with no explanation. The American Zionist Council morphed into what we know today as AIPAC. Kennedy joined the Senate, then, just after he won the California Democratic primary in 1968, and appeared to have a real chance to reach the White House, he too was assassinated.
Senator William J. Fulbright, who had been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the struggle with the AZC, said in 1973 that "Israel controls the U.S. Senate," and added, "We should be more concerned about the United States' interests." In a pattern that has become all too predictable, pro-Israeli campaign funds swelled the coffers of his opponent and he lost his seat in 1974.
As for manifest destiny and the military base in the Middle East, both Eisenhower and Kennedy were undoubtedly American imperialists, neither one above getting his hands dirty. However, it's interesting to contrast the deep respect that most Arabs felt towards both men, and the suspicion and hostility that has been directed (with brief exceptions) against American presidents since then. The reason is very simple: Eisenhower and Kennedy were perceived as loyal to
American geostrategic interests, which the Arabs could understand and respect, and impartial in their dealings with both the Arabs and Israel.
Arabs, with their long history of dealing with empires, are realists. They understand that powerful countries have a deep interest in the region's strategic resources, and that the owners of those resources are in no position to dictate terms to a global superpower. However, they expect to cut some kind of a deal that they can live with. The introduction of Israel into the equation immediately transforms it into a zero-sum game, because it is simply not possible to co-exist with a racist, expansionist, aggressive, militaristic rogue colonial state in one's midst.
As for "America manipulating the religious right", you're ignoring the fact that the religious right only became such a powerful force in American politics after the Likud was elected to power in Israel in 1977. The Likud, under the leadership of Menachem Begin, immediately executed a plan to transform the then disorganized, fragmented, politically weak religious right in the U.S. into a powerful weapon in Israel's hands. Begin changed the name of the West Bank into "Judea, Samaria and the Galilee", and spoke constantly in biblical terms, something that had certainly not characterized previous Israeli leaders. The Likud sent emissaries to prominent leaders of the religious right, frequently bearing lavish gifts, such as the Lear Jet given to Jerry Falwell in the early 80s, which he used to travel across the country to drum up support for his brand of "Christian zionism".
From the late 1970s on, Israel forged very intimate relations with the most powerful leaders of the Christian Right, notably Pat Robertson, whose lucrative and
incredibly dirty business dealings with Zaire's monstrous late president Mobutu had, I'm sure, nothing to do with the fact that Mobutu was
a close ally of Israel. I'm not familiar with televangelists in general, but it would be interesting to see an investigation of how many of these "Christian zionists" operate their so-called religious outfits as fronts for similar scams.
Brainpanhandler, most citizens of most states understand that their country doesn't need a so-called "god-given right" to protect its genuine national interests, especially if this can be done with at least the appearance of a reasonably fair deal for the other party. The kind of frenzied religious brainwashing associated with the christian zionists is, in contrast, most useful for persuading people to behave in a way that is irrational and self-destructive.
Nordic, I think the above sheds some light on the questions you raised, as well.
Nordic said:
I want to know exactly what Israel is blackmailing America with, and WHY America doesn't tell them to fuck off. Considering the way America usually acts, like the biggest crime family in the city, it's just astounding to me that someone could successfully blackmail America for generations.
You don't blackmail "America" -- you only have to be able to target specific, strategically placed individuals for bribery and/or blackmail. Of course, you'd need to control enormous and very diverse resources to do that successfully against people who are powerful in their own right. You'd need lots of money, naturally but even more importantly an effective mechanism to disseminate mass propaganda, recruit and mobilize "foot soldiers" at all levels, not only inside America but elsewhere in the world, a well-placed network of infiltrators and spies, and close links with global organized crime wouldn't hurt, either.
And you also need to be able to do all of that in plain sight, with no serious fear of exposure, secure in the knowledge that you can silence dissent, at least in where it counts, with accusations of anti-semitism and reminders about the Holocaust, instantly zapping your opponents into the outer fringes of obscurity where they can do no harm. If that still doesn't work, accidents will happen. It's a dangerous world.
