Israeli Lobby was the Cause of the Iraqi War

[Carcano]

No, they don't need the Jewish vote..

Jewish interests are not necessarily Zionist interests.

For example, most of my friends in high school were Jewish but had no interest in Israel at all, or even in Judaism. The subject never came up.

The US voting block Israel does exploit to the max is the Christian right, who support the re-establishment of Israel on a religious 'end times' basis.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=mjMRgT5o-Ig

 

[p-brane]

I saw a report on 60 minutes on how the single most powerful lobby in the US and the one that has more direct access to the executive branch than any other is not israel but saudi arabia. They`re reported to own approximately 7 percent of the US, though I`m unsure what this means exactly.

 

[John99]

Jewish interests are not necessarily Zionist interests.

For example, most of my friends in high school were Jewish but had no interest in Israel at all, or even in Judaism. The subject never came up.

The US voting block Israel does exploit to the max is the Christian right, who support the re-establishment of Israel on a religious 'end times' basis.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=mjMRgT5o-Ig

They just didnt talk about it around you but it is kind of like an Iranian having no interest in Iran or a German having no interest in Germany. Living in U.S all my life and i never met anyone interested in 'end times' stuff. Wonder where they all are?

 

[Carcano]

it is kind of like an Iranian having no interest in Iran or a German having no interest in Germany.

Well I'm of German ancestry and have no interest in Germany.

My connection to Germany, in fact, is far closer in time to the thousands of years linking european Jews to Israel.

 

[John99]

But you musty care if it exists or not. If you say that you dont care if Germany exists then that is an exception to the rule.

 

[Tyler]

Can't actually prove it, except by circumstantial information.

1. Circumstantial evidence is not proof. So this is not an "except by" case.

2. Okay, then give me all the circumstantial evidence that the Israeli lobby caused the Iraq war. (By the by, you know Israel has long been more worried about Iran than Iraq, yes?) And I don't mean give me circumstantial evidence that the Israeli lobby pushed for the Iraq war - many other lobbies did as well, as did most of the American people. What I want is specific evidence that they were the cause. That the idea did not exist before the Israeli lobbied pushed it, or, at the very least, that the idea was not at all popular until the Israeli lobby pushed it and became popular specifically because the Israeli lobby pushed it.

However, there is a lot of information out there on the role of Jews in sublimating the antisemitism in the US and creating an atmosphere congenial to Jews by gradually making Jews "Americanised".

I think you enjoy being mocked and receiving anger from others on this site for your opinions. You have that Rush Limbaugh like quality of saying things that are totally irrelevant, ignite emotions, but are not actually crossing the line of being legitimately offensive or too far. This idea in your post - that Jews became "Americanized" - is a very good example of that.

(1) It has nothing to do with the original post or what I said.
(2) It singles out one group as if the quality you attach to them is unique in the situation. It is not. Almost every group that has come to America has become in many ways "Americanized". And America has become "them-ized". America has been shaped and helped shape it's immigrants for more than a century.
(3) It is worded as an insult would be worded, yet is not actually an insult. It generalizes, but without being necessarily offensive.

Allow me to be more clear by example.
There is no conclusive proof that the Moslems control American policy towards imported feta cheese. However, there is a lot of information out there to show that the Moslems have become more "Americanized".

Do you see what I mean? The two halves of the above statement have absolutely no relation. Yet are phrased as if the latter supports evidence of the former claim. And since the claim in your example is - by most - considered to be a negative against the subject, it comes off as being racist (or anti-jew, or whatever term you choose) without actually quite being so. In short, you get to push a quasi-anti-jew sentiment without suffering the moral pratfalls of actually making an anti-jew statement. It's good rhetoric for making debate partners pissed off, but it's poor logic, poor writing and poor sport.

Most people who love debate and feel passionately about an issue seem to also enjoy the "martyr syndrome". That is to say, they take a certain pleasure out of having certain groups of people deride, criticize or hate them. (I myself, from time to time, am quite guilty of this). You seem to fall into this category. Repeatedly I've seen you respond to childishness with even greater childishness; respond to ignorance with willful silence, contempt or pure criticism bordering on elitist derision.

It would serve you better to cut it out. The best reason is because it's ineffective. If you have a goal in mind, you ought to be working towards that goal, not hindering yourself. The second reason is just general self honesty, which is always a good thing, and holding yourself to the highest standards. The final reason that applies to you is that I simply doubt God would commend such behaviour. It's been a while since I've read the Quran, but I don't recall reading "thou shalt respond to infidels with deceptively false logic, trickery and insults."

It would be difficult for anyone to believe that just 100 years ago there were only a million Jews in the US, almost half of whom were newcomers.

In 1920 the population of America was about 92 million (and change).
In 1920 the Jewish population of America was about 2 million (and change).

In 2008 the population of America was 305 million (and change).
In 2008 the Jewish population of America was about 5.5 million (and change).

From 1920 to 2008 the population of the country increased by ~2.3 fold.
In that same time period the Jewish population increased by ~1.74 fold.

In 1920 Jews made up ~2.1% of the population.
Today they make up around ~1.9% of the population.

In short, nothing is surprising about the relatively minor rise in number (though not representative percentage) of Jews in America. Most other minority ethnic and religious groups have climbed in number and importance much more than the Jews did.

 

[S.A.M.]

1. Circumstantial evidence is not proof. So this is not an "except by" case.

Okay. :shrug:

2. Okay, then give me all the circumstantial evidence that the Israeli lobby caused the Iraq war. (By the by, you know Israel has long been more worried about Iran than Iraq, yes?) And I don't mean give me circumstantial evidence that the Israeli lobby pushed for the Iraq war - many other lobbies did as well, as did most of the American people. What I want is specific evidence that they were the cause. That the idea did not exist before the Israeli lobbied pushed it, or, at the very least, that the idea was not at all popular until the Israeli lobby pushed it and became popular specifically because the Israeli lobby pushed it.

Perhaps you should see the point you responded to, that in turn, I responded to:

White support for Jews and Israel only increased slowly to today's levels as a result of the Lobby and the mass media which also just happened to be mostly owned by the type of people who also make up the Israeli Lobby. It's a slow process of indoctrination.

Can you prove that?

The best part of these theories is that they take all blame off the white christian and heap it squarely where it's most comfortable. On the jew.

Can't actually prove it, except by circumstantial information. However, there is a lot of information out there on the role of Jews in sublimating the antisemitism in the US and creating an atmosphere congenial to Jews by gradually making Jews "Americanised". It would be difficult for anyone to believe that just 100 years ago there were only a million Jews in the US, almost half of whom were newcomers.


http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/jewishexp.htm

This idea in your post - that Jews became "Americanized" - is a very good example of that.

I think you're getting carried away for some reason. The Americanisation of the Jews was a conscious process of making Jews acceptable to mainstream America as "American". From a time when all institutions were not only suspicious but also discriminatory in their opinions of Jews [consider as an example the Arab image in the US today ] to the present situation where its no longer an issue was not a natural progression of events. That Jews in America have suppressed the Sephardic traditions in order to become largely "invisible" by emphasising their European roots and later by embracing mainstream America as their image is an important factor in reducing antisemitism.

As to Jews being Americanised. How many Americans know what Judaism is? What does Judaism mean to the average non-Jew? I doubt there are many who even know what Hanukkah means. And yet, there will be few Americans who do not now consider Jews a part of American society.

In short, nothing is surprising about the relatively minor rise in number (though not representative percentage) of Jews in America. Most other minority ethnic and religious groups have climbed in number and importance much more than the Jews did.

Possibly,but we're talking about sublimation of antisemitism, which is a different matter entirely. It is interesting because at no time until the 1950s, when Truman came on the scene, was American Jewry free of antisemitism from the mainstream.

Immigration to America meant that much of Judaism was discarded, and much was retained. Acculturation did not always lead to assimilation: Jewishness was honed as an independent variable in the motivations of many of its American adherents- -and has remained so, even though Jewish institutions, ideologies, and even Jewish values have been reshaped by America to such an degree that many Jews of the past might not recognize as Jewish some of what constitutes American Jewishness.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Americanization-Reappraisals-Jewish-Intellectual-History/dp/0814780016

 

[cosmictraveler]

SAM have you ever tried to show a constructive way out of the dilema that's going on there? By that I mean that both sides would agree to your findings? :shrug:Just wondering.

 

[S.A.M.]

Yeah, but its not what most people are interested in discussing.

@Tyler:

give me all the circumstantial evidence that the Israeli lobby caused the Iraq war.

Although that was not the question I responded to, I don't think its a coincidence that the people and institutions which promoted and wrote on the Iraq war as "good policy" for America were also the ones writing policy for Israel. One of the names that keeps popping up is David Wurmser

A pro-Israel ideologue who had long advocated overthrowing the government of Saddam Hussein, Wurmser worked for a number of influential policy outfits before joining the administration, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). Wurmser's spouse, Meyrav Wurmser, is director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the rightist Hudson Institute.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1392.html

He wrote an extensive plan on the overthrow of Saddam and was advisor to the Bush government.

Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favor of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS). [5][6]

Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, in a January 2004 article in Mother Jones, report that shortly after September 11, 2001, Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode had recruited David Wurmser to be a member of a unit in the Pentagon "which would be the nucleus of the Defense Department's Iraq disinformation campaign that was established within weeks of the attacks in New York and Washington." [7]

They noted that in 1997, Wurmser penned a column in the Wall Street Journal called "Iraq Needs a Revolution". "A weak and demoralized army is vulnerable to an organized and internationally supported insurgency, especially one that operates from territory in Iraq free of Saddam's control, such as the northern safe haven. At one point, the United States supported such an insurgency, called the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi," he wrote.

"Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam's weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: there is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily, and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them. The week-long interruption in U.N. inspections gave him ample time to prepare his biological capability for use. Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use his weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up,"he concluded.

On September 4, 2004, the Washington Post reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators had questioned David Wurmser, along with Harold Rhode, Paul Dundes Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith about their involvement in passing classified information to Ahmad Chalabi and/or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Wurmser

His wife, an Israeli is the founder of Memri, which is responsible for shaping American view of Middle East Media. Its also not a coincidence that she has a voice in many of the above institutes, which are also funded and supported by pro-Israeli groups like AIPAC. One example of a prominent Israeli voice is a group within the Brookings Institution called the Saban center for Middle East policy.

Saban Center for Middle East Policy is a research organization established at the Brookings Institution in 2002 through the donation of nearly $13 million by the Israeli media-mogul Haim Saban. Its current director is the veteran pro-Israel lobbyist Martin Indyk, who had earlier founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC spinoff, to counter the Brooking Institution which was seen as not pro-Israel enough.

Explaining his rationale behind the center, Saban told the New York Times:

"I've heard from leaders on both sides of the aisle in the United States and leaders in Europe about what Sharon shouldn't do," he said. "I've haven't heard one educated suggestion about what he should do."[1]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Saban_Center_for_Middle_East_Policy

 

[cosmictraveler]

What did you propose, if it isn't to much to ask, perhaps another thread about solutions to this conflict could be started or no? :shrug:

 

[S.A.M.]

What did you propose, if it isn't to much to ask, perhaps another thread about solutions to this conflict could be started or no? :shrug:

In my opinion, the only solution now possible is a one state solution. When I advocated it quite some time back, it was because I could not see how an uncontiguous Palestine could exist for long side by side next to a militaristic and expansionist Israel, rather than considerations of what either side thinks they want, but are not willing to compromise towards.

Now I see it as inevitable. Unless Palestine is to be built in the sky, there is no way it is feasible. Unofficially, Israeli policy is doing everything it can to steal the land.

According to the 2008 data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 290,000 Jews live in the 120 official settlements and dozens of outposts established throughout the West Bank over the past 41 years.

"Nothing was done in hiding," says Pinchas Wallerstein, director-general of the Yesha Council of settlements and a leading figure in the settlement project. "I'm not familiar with any [building] plans that were not the initiative of the Israeli government." He says that if the owners of private land upon which settlements are built were to complain and the court were to accept their complaint, then the structures would have to be moved somewhere else. "This has been the Yesha
Council's position for the past years," he says.

You'd never know it from touring several of the settlements in which massive construction has taken place on private Palestinian lands. Entire neighborhoods built without permits or on private lands are inseparable parts of the settlements. The sense of dissonance only intensifies when you find that municipal offices, police and fire stations were also built upon and currently operate on lands that belong to Palestinians.

On Misheknot Haro'im Street in the Kochav Yaakov settlement, a young mother is carrying her two children home. "I've lived here for six years," she says, sounding surprised when told that her entire neighborhood was built upon private Palestinian land. "I know that there's some small area in the community that is in dispute, but I never heard that this is private land." Would she have built her home on this land had she known this from the start? "No," she answers. "I wouldn't have kicked anyone out of his home."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060043.html

"Ma'aleh Adumim is an inalienable part of Jerusalem and the State of Israel in any permanent settlement," read a statement from the office of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "A1 is a corridor that connects Ma'aleh Adumim to Mount Scopus and therefore it is important for it to remain part of the country. This is the position of Labor since Yitzhak Rabin and also of the government of Barak in 1999, and the Americans know this position."

The most blatant example is Area A1, 12,000 dunam north of Route 1, between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim. The Ma'aleh Adumim Municipality is planning to build 3,500 housing units there which, in an official statement, will constitute "contiguous construction between our city to the capital Jerusalem and will be the Zionist response that will prevent the division of Jerusalem and the dislocation of Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Adumim from the capital of Israel."

The other side of the coin, of course, is that this sort of contiguity will prevent Palestinian construction between East Jerusalem to Ramallah, and will make it difficult to reach agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the question of permanent borders. This is why the U.S. has strongly opposed this sort of Israeli construction for more than a decade. Israeli governments have avoided construction in this area, mostly because of U.S. pressure.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060392.html

Now all that remains to be seen is the path that Israel will take to the one state. Apartheid, genocide or acceptance.

 

[disease]

It didn't take any conspiracy on our side to make that happen, they did it all by themselves

But why did they? What motivated the embassy takeover?

Why do most ME indigenous people, view the West, and America-Israel, as an axis of evil? Why do they view Westerners as greedy, manipulative and exploitative?

Is it because, mostly, we are?

 

[John99]

Doesnt seem like they do, on their own anyway because they\you certainly like to live in "the West"