When the Israelis' controversial twenty-two-day
military campaign in Gaza ended, on January 18th, it also seemed to end
the promising peace talks between Israel and Syria. The two countries
had been engaged for almost a year in negotiations through
intermediaries in Istanbul. Many complicated technical matters had been
resolved, and there were agreements in principle on the normalization
of diplomatic relations. The consensus, as an ambassador now serving in
Tel Aviv put it, was that the two sides had been "a lot closer than you
might think."
Only days after they were groaning with fury at the Israeli lobby's
success in hounding the outspoken Charles Freeman away from his
proposed intelligence job for President Obama, the Arabs now have to
contend with an Israeli Foreign Minister whose - let us speak frankly -
racist comments about Palestinian loyalty tests have brought into the
new Netanyahu cabinet one of the most unpleasant politicians in the
Middle East.
On Tuesday morning, Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis
Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that
Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council
(NIC), will bring to the job - "his long experience and inventive mind," for example.
By five o'clock that afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection "not proceed."
The withdrawal of Chas Freeman as chairman of the National Intelligence
Council, following two weeks of vituperative attacks on him by the amen
chorus of the U.S. Zionist lobby is a black mark on the Obama
administration.
Obviously, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are rabid, hateful
paranoids -- total bigots and anti-Semites -- for having suggested that
there are powerful domestic political forces in the U.S. which
enforce Israel-centric orthodoxies and make it politically impossible
to question America's blind loyalty to Israel. What irrational lunacy on their part:
WASHINGTON - Amb. Chas Freeman
withdrew from consideration for a top intelligence post in the Obama
administration on Tuesday, following a vitriolic battle that pitted
Republican lawmakers and pro-Israel hardliners opposed to his
appointment against liberals and members of the intelligence and
diplomatic communities who had come to his defense.
WASHINGTON - The appointment of a
top-ranking retired diplomat and vocal critic of Israel to a key
intelligence post has triggered an intense backlash from hawkish Israel
supporters in Congress and the media who are pressing the
administration of President Barack Obama to reconsider.
President Obama has surprised the national security establishment, and
not a few in the peace movement, with his Friday commitment to pull all
American troops out of Iraq by 2011.
This is the text of a talk by Chris
Hedges that will be read at anti-war gatherings to be held by The World
Can't Wait in New York's Union Square, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Seattle, Nashville, Louisville, Chicago and Berkeley on March 19 to
protest the sixth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.
Bibi Netanyahu’s assumption of power in Israel sets the stage for a huge campaign by the Israeli government, and its well-oiled lobby groups in Washington, to push us into a war with Iran.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies. But reality rarely impedes on politics. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama, along with Netanyahu, all talk as if Iran is on the brink of dropping the big one on the Jewish state.
