Connecting the Dots: US, Israel and the Sudan Why Lifting US Sanctions on the Sudan Has Long Proven Elusive? (1)
Kiev/ Ukraine in Arabic/To elucidate the power and influence of the Israel lobby on the US Congress, the Israeli author and peace activist Uri Avnery once joked “if the pro-Israeli lobby like AIBAC were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 Senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it at once.”
The above joke highlights the enigma or say the stigma that increasingly baffles or even haunts the multitude of political analysts and observers in the US and the world today; to what extend it is true that Israeli interests, dictate what the America is doing worldwide? How far accurate are the mounting warnings that Jewish interest groups or Jewish voters have generally "hijacked" the U.S. foreign policy to make it subservient to Israeli interests. And at times, at the United States' expense? Even if such policy does not in essence, translate the true American interests. Darfur and sanctions on Sudan as shall be latter reviewed, can aptly be the case-study.
In their book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” two imminent political science professors; John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, do accuse the US of willingly sidelining its interests and many of that of its allies, in order to further the interest of Israel. Moreover, they accuse the pro-Israeli lobby particularly IBAC, of manipulating the US media, policing academia and silencing Israeli critics by labeling them bigots and anti-Semitic.
In fact it’s argued that Israel managed to control American politicians and media, through its powerful lobby in Washington, enabling it to change the political dynamics in favor of the regime in Tel Aviv. These lobby groups today, as one of the critics put it, have their hands on almost every lever in the US; banks, major corporations, media and congress…etc.
Some critics go the extreme in describing how the US Congress has become overwhelmingly and sometimes blindly supportive of Israel ; Pat Buchanan the senior advisor to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, he once described the Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory. “
Whereas, Bob Finch (American author and essayist), who in his article "the Jewish conquest of America" goes to say “America may have lost the war against Vietnam but it has never been invaded or conquered by external forces since its declaration of independence. But since the second world war and, in particular the establishment of the terrorist state referred to as Israel, Israelis started to own and control the American media. They compose the largest group of billionaires in America who fund a vast network of political research organizations which determine the views of America's Jewish owned media and America's Jewish funded politicians. ”
He goes on to argue that there is no such thing as an American empire. America does not have an empire. On the contrary, America has become part of the Jewish empire which dictates America's domestic and foreign policies. “The passionate attachment to Israel, the dual loyalty felt by many Americans - whereby Israel's interests are put on the same or higher level than U.S. interests - has come back to haunt the United States through the agency of a President willing to adopt the most extravagant dreams of right wing Israelis and pro-Israeli hawks. ”
Still more alarming, it is widely argued that over the past decades, Israel’s agents were accused of buying the loyalties of the vast majority of Congress people, training them to recognize and obey the whistles, signals and script from Tel Aviv. The way pro-Israel political donors are trying to buy Congress, and in a way that sometimes runs contrary to U.S. interests, was echoed and highlighted by many celebrated and notable American figures.
Thomas Friedman, the "Foreign Affairs" columnist for The New York Times for instance, criticizing the invitation of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address a joint session of Congress about sanctions on Iran in 2011, as an attempt to discredit President Obama’s foreign policy and an attempt to force the U.S. into a war with Iran, Friedman commented on the ovation accorded to Mr. Netanyahu in the Congress session by saying “ the standing ovation Netanyahu got in Congress this year was not for his politics, that ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Like others, Friedman was lashed out by pro- Israeli circles, which accused him of planting the seeds of an anti-Semitic libel. That yet opens another controversial chapter; how the holocaust and the "anti-Semite" accusation have been used to manipulate those who criticize Israel.
How "anti-Semite" card, and victim-hood were guilefully crafted for bullying or intimidate Israel's critics into silence to avoid being ostracized as bigots, with the hope that such ad hominem attack will confuse those who might listen to the critics and cause them to discount anything they say. Shai Farnklin, the Senior Fellow for United Nations Affairs, aptly epitomizes that by saying ...“Anti-Semitic” in the US has become synonymous with “morally indefensible,” unworthy of rebuttal, able to swiftly kill careers and conversations.
The above viewpoint was unequivocally pinpointed by former Democratic Congressman Mr. Brian Baird, who in a recent interview in Al-Jazeera English Channel, on the influence of the Israel lobby, demonstrated and underscored the influence of the biased perspective of Middle East issues, and how they affect American elections and American policy-making, to the extent that any politician who dares not to back or take a pro-Israeli position, shall automatically be exposed to dire political consequences, the least of which could be a financial penalty, necessarily strong enough to substantially lessens his or her voting chances of being elected or re-elected.
Juan Cole, the American academic and commentator on the modern Middle East and History of India summarizes all that by saying “The Israel lobbies as a project of Jewish nationalism have long depended primarily on three tactics for their success. Firstly they brutally punish those critical of Israeli policy (no matter how justified the criticism) with boycotts, smears and blackballing; Secondly they marshal American Jewish groups into unanimity in support of Israel regardless of the latter’s feelings about certain policies, and thirdly they use political donations to shape Congressional and general political discourse on Israel in official circles”.
On the other hand, Grace Halsell, an American journalist and writer who died in Washington in the year 2000, narrates in her article “What Christians Don't Know About Israel” how American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of her government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East, wondering in despair, whether there remains any hope of ever changing U.S. policy?
More importantly Grace Questions the much chanted claim that US is truly the land of the free, when she reviews how the publication of her book, written after her multiple visits to Jerusalem in late seventies, and where she depicts and authenticates the Israeli persecution and torture of the Palestinian youth in the Occupied Territories, was sadly restricted .
Grace Halsell describes how when she went to MacMillan Publishing Company to get the book printed, she was dumbfounded “I was told to take my manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for mistakes, they (Israelis) were not pleased.” They asked me, ‘You are not going to publish this book, are you?’ I asked, ‘Were there mistakes?’ ‘Not mistakes as such. But it shouldn't be published. It’s anti-Israel.’
By Mubarak M.Musa Diplomat; Sudan Embassy Kiev