No More Lies, No More Liebermans

Lost in the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fate of Joe Lieberman is the quiet elephant, richer, larger and more unified than the imPalined GOP, called AIPAC. Addressing that powerful lobbying group last year, Lieberman acknowledged that without AIPAC's help he would no longer be a member of the Senate: "First, let me again say thank you. Your support helped me win an election... I don't think it's any secret that much of my fight for reelection was about the war in Iraq... "

In the run-up to the 2006 elections AIPAC donated $127,093 to Lieberman's campaign. Over his career Lieberman has received $363,851 with Chris Dodd his fellow Senator from Connecticut receiving $234,178. AIPAC also donated $286, 258 for Lieberman's presidential run. So it hardly comes as a surprise despite all the mud he sprayed on Obama and Democrats in general, that usually principled men like Carl Levin-- Lifetime AIPAC receipts:-$658,887, and Dick Durbin:-$330,421-- voted to keep old, two-faced Joe in his chairmanship of Government Affairs and Homeland Security.

Still, there is a noxious irony to the senate Democrats' spineless secret vote. Obama won by campaigning to limit the influence of lobbyists and for greater transparency in government. Yet because a political campaign can run into the millions of dollars Congress is afraid to part with AIPAC's positions even as such positions have come to serve Israel's far right elements.

Groups such as the Religious Action Committee of Reform Judaism, IPF, APN, and Brit Tzedek are far more representative of American Jewish opinion than AIPAC (and as the American Prospect suggests--probably closer to where the Israeli public and even much of Israeli policy stands today). Before the Palestinians resorted to killing innocent Israeli civilians through acts of terror the leaders of three national American Jewish organizations attacked the hard-line stance taken by AIPAC as being out of step "with the consensus of the organized Jewish community." In a full-page ad in The New York Times, the leaders of the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith blasted AIPAC's hard-line stands.

Such dissent is rarely heard from mainline Jewish leaders anymore but paradoxically, it could be argued that there is too little Jewish influence in Washington. And apparently holding his former colleagues in Congress to account is not the kind of Change Obama believes in.

Obviously the question of "who speaks for Israel/" is a complex one, but the larger question and the one that impedes any meaningful progress toward resolving the Middle East stalemate is "who speaks for the United States". For any honest observer it is clear that when it comes to our foreign policy vis a vis Israel the Congress either parrots neo-con talking points or timidly stays mute. A prime example came after Hezbollah's attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory bombing of Lebanon.

On July 18, the Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution "condemning Hamas and Hezbollah and their state sponsors and supporting Israel's exercise of its right to self-defense." After House majority leader John Boehner removed language from the bill urging "all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure," the House version passed by a landslide, 410 to 8.

AIPAC not only lobbied for the resolution; it had written it. "They [Congress] were given a resolution by AIPAC," said former Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who addressed the House Democratic Caucus on July 19. "They didn't prepare one."

AIPAC is erroneously referred to as "The Israel Lobby" when in fact its support greatly depends on Christian evangelicals and Christian Zionists who frame each Mid-East issue in terms of protecting "the integrity of a biblical Israel", an ethereal land of their own image.

"The Bush Administration is bad enough in tolerating measures they would not accept anywhere else but Israel," says Henry Siegman, the former head of the American Jewish Congress and a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the Congress, if anything, is urging the Administration on and criticizing them even at their most accommodating... to be critical of Israel is to deny oneself the ability to succeed in American politics."

The Roots of an Unbreakable Alliance

Before the middle of the 1960s, the position of the U.S. State Department was that Israel was strong enough to defend itself. That conclusion arose from Israel's success in the Suez campaign:

Egyptian President Nasser had wrested control of the Suez Canal zone away from the British and French companies which owned it. At the same time, he had Egyptian forces block the Straits of Tiran, Israel's only outlet to the Red Sea. Israel and Egypt had clashed repeatedly since their 1948 war as Egypt encouraged Palestinian fighters to attack Israel from its territory.

Israeli forces constantly made cross-border raids in retaliation so after Israel's decision to invade the Sinai peninsula Britain and France launched their own joint invasion and occupied the Suez Canal zone rebuking Nasser's attempted nationalization of the vital waterway.The U.S. had strenuously opposed that military intervention, despite Egypt's five-year blockade of Israel-- and despite cancellation of the massive Aswan Dam project.

In a precursor to Bush 2003 in the run-up to the invasion, France and Britain had wanted the U.N. mantle for their military action, but knew that with U.S. and Soviet opposition, they could expect rejection. On October 13, the Security Council adopted the Six-Point Plan to which Egypt agreed, but France and Britain did not..

"What's all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or 'neutralizing' him?" blustered British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, "I want him destroyed--I don't give a damn if there's anarchy and chaos in Egypt."

After a secret three-day meeting beginning October 22 at Sevres, France, the leaders of France, Britain and Israel colluded to invade. So with Britain and France providing crucial air support, Israel attacked the Egyptian army in Sinai on October 29, justifying it as retaliation for violations of U.N. resolutions barring guerrilla raids and blockade. The next day Britain and France ordered Egypt and Israel to withdraw and accept temporary UK-French occupation of the Canal. When as expected, Egypt refused, French and British air forces bombed several Canal sites and two days later Israel occupied Gaza and Sinai.

An enraged Nasser rushed to purchase long range bombers from the Soviets. It was perhaps that fateful decision that led to the current impasse. Up until then, Washington had avoided alienating the newly independent Arab states for fear of precipitating a Middle East arms race. That all changed when seeking to keep balance, John F. Kennedy approved the sale of Hawk missiles to Israel and the Cold War's new arms race was officially underway. Lyndon Johnson would take things further in 1968 by selling Phantom jets to Israel, establishing the United States as Israel's principal arms supplier thus beginning a new U.S. policy to give Israel a qualitative military edge over its Arab neighbors.

It is now de rigueur among right-leaning Jewish circles to deride Jimmy Carter as an "enemy of Israel". However it was the Carter Administration that laid the basis for what has become a fundamental strategic cooperation by making Israel eligible to sell military equipment to the United States and engaging in joint military exercises. Reagan would seal the symbiosis: "Only by full appreciation of the critical role the State of Israel plays in our strategic calculus can we build the foundation for thwarting Moscow's designs on territories and resources vital to our security and our national well-being."

While the Israelis wisely played up their capability to deter the Soviet Union, the Arab states refused to join Reagan's "strategic consensus", insisting the greatest threat to them was not Communism, but Zionism. The Israelis never considered the Soviets their principal threat either, but were smart enough to say otherwise and win Reagan's favor.

It is impossible at this point to see where America's Middle East policy ends and Israel's policy begins. Washington's neocons wanted this war and while there were a myriad of reasons for the disastrous Iraq invasion the FBI and the US Justice Department counter-intelligence bureau were already investigating a top Pentagon analyst suspected of spying for Israel at AIPAC's request. In 2005, the analyst, Larry Franklin, pleaded guilty to espionage and admitted he handed over top-secret information on Iran directly to an Israeli government official in Washington. Franklin also agreed to testify against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, the two former AIPAC officials involved in the effort to steer a new conflict with Iran.

Under normal circumstances, AIPAC would at the very least have been barred from financing congressional candidates and perhaps charged with committing treason. But the US/Israel relationship has become so intertwined with AIPAC funded think tanks virtually writing U.S. policy that it would be tantamount to Congress and the Bush administration prosecuting themselves.

It is time to cast off the charade and declare Israel and the Palestinian territories U.S. states. From the distance it may seem like a wild, impossible dream, but our current policies have led from disaster to greater disaster. When honest and open debate can be subverted by double agents and bald opportunists like Joe Lieberman is it not time for a radical reassessment?

Joined by a united flag an attack on an Israeli or a Palestinian would become an attack on a fellow American. No more pretending all our foreign relationships are equal. Now, is that not the kind of bold, honest Change we need to believe in?