Those Americans who dare to challenge the strangle-hold that Israel and its friends have over US foreign policy will likely find themselves targeted even more aggressively in the upcoming year. Two weeks ago the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), widely reckoned to be the largest and most powerful component of the Jewish state’s lobby, declared that it will now begin directly funding political candidates who are perceived as pro-Israel. Up until now, AIPAC has preferred to operate somewhat in the shadows, representing itself as a organization that is in part “educational” to justify its 501(c)3 tax exempt status which it uses to send all new congressmen on propaganda trips to Israel.

Of course, that has always been a bit of a fiction enabled by a Justice Department that is inclined to ignore all Israeli misbehavior. There are a number of reasons why AIPAC should be regarded for what it is, i.e. an organization that has as a priority the promotion of Israeli interests without any concern for the damage being done to the United States and its institutions. Under US law, specifically the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1937, AIPAC should be compelled to forfeit its special tax status and register, which would permit the government to have full access to its finances and also require a record of its frequent meetings with the Israeli Embassy in Washington as well as with senior Israeli officials in Israel. It would also have to report its significant and unparalleled lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill. AIPAC would deny that it is actually directed or possibly funded in part by the Israeli government, but its website somewhat puts the lie to that conceit where it describes itself as “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” before elaborating how “We are proud to be a diverse movement of passionate pro-Israel Americans.”

The other lie promoted by AIPAC is that, up until now, it has not funded the political campaigns of its many friends both in Congress and in state and local governments. The reality is that AIPAC and some of its associated groups have aggressively vetted candidates for office at all levels. During its annual summit in Washington, politicians in attendance have routinely held fundraisers at hotels and restaurants not at the AIPAC event but often at hotels within walking distance. It is known that AIPAC publishes for-internal-use-only a candidates’ “scoring card” prior to elections reflective of views on Israel. As AIPAC is itself funded by Jewish billionaires and is in regular contact with them, the exchange of information on who is a “friend” and deserving of campaign money would be easily accomplished without having to use AIPAC as a conduit.

The new structure will consist of a regular political action committee (PAC) able to contribute $5,000 maximum donations to identified candidates per race, and a super PAC, which can raise unlimited money for an individual candidate. AIPAC PAC will be the name of the regular PAC, while the super PAC has not yet received a label.

AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittman sent out an email explaining the changes. In perhaps one of the most chilling statements that I have read recently, Wittman asserts that “The creation of a PAC and a super PAC is an opportunity to significantly deepen and strengthen the involvement of the pro-Israel community in politics.” Given Israel’s current dominance of Congress, the White House and the mainstream media one fears what might come next if stronger “involvement of the pro-Israel community in politics” becomes a reality. Jews constitute less than 2% of the US population and they already are hugely overrepresented in elite professions and politics while at the same time reserving to themselves perpetual victimhood to justify the preferential anti-democratic policies that they actually promote. Will Joe “I’m a Zionist” Biden’s cabinet be required by law to be 100% Jewish? Will Congress require a Jewish majority? Will the government be setting up gulags somewhere out west for people like me who oppose such dominance and the “Israel Project”? Where does this ever end to satisfy the Jewish lobby?

One might well ask why AIPAC is changing its platform to make itself even more accessible since it would seem that the shift to PACs does not much change what happens behind closed doors when politicians come begging for money. The answer may lie in the perception by Jewish groups and the Israeli government that Zionism is in trouble due to the accumulation of egregious human rights violations and war crime attacks on neighbors. The world view of Israel is increasingly negative. So the response is to open the door a bit to visibly dangle more money, which the Israeli Lobby has plenty of, to take on critics.

Israel and its friends are particularly concerned over the handful of progressives in Congress who have expressed reservations about the blind approval of Israeli crimes against humanity. The PACs will enable a more robust response by providing readily available money to run pro-Israel candidates against them to bring about their removal from Congress. The Zionists also worry about the growing support for the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to put the same kind of economic pressure on Israel that once brought about change in South Africa. Already Israel advocacy groups at the state level have succeeded in passing legislation in 27 states that in one way or another punishes anyone one who supports “boycotting” Israel. AIPAC would like that number to become 50 and it is also pushing hard on Congress for “hate legislation” that creates harsh criminal and civil penalties for anyone who questions the holocaust or criticizes Israel, which will be defined by the legislation as anti-Semitic acts.

Hand in hand with the moves at the state level, Jewish groups are rewriting text books to include more on the so-called holocaust, to sometimes include mandatory holocaust instruction at grade school and high school levels. In one bizarre incident in Washington DC, students were made to reenact “scenes” from the holocaust including mass executions and burials. One student was made to portray Adolph Hitler and instructed to include a simulated suicide at the end of the exercise.

This overreach all comes packaged together with alarming reports, put out inevitably by Jewish groups, regarding a surge in what it chooses to label as anti-Semitic crimes. Such “crimes” include numerous no-victim incidents like scrawled graffiti on walls or display of posters defending the Palestinians. The Anti-Defamation-League (ADL), which leads the pack in its constant cries of anti-Semitism, hypocritically claims blandly that it is working to “Combat Extremism and Hate.” That definition apparently does not include the treatment of the Palestinians at the hands of its co-religionists in Israel.

Indeed, the tendency of the Israel Lobby to overreach because it has become so arrogant due to its power is perhaps the key to bringing it down. A recent exchange in Florida demonstrates how the ADL, sensitive to any possible slight, actually reacted harshly to someone who was actually on its side. Five weeks ago, rabidly pro-Israeli Governor Ron DeSantis’ Press Secretary, Christina Pushaw tweeted a sarcastic comment stating that there was “no weird conspiracy theory stuff here” about press reports regarding the Republic of Georgia’s Prime Minister meeting with Rothschild & Co about investment opportunities. The ADL Florida Regional Director Sarah Emmons took offense and responded with the following:

“The belief that the Rothschilds manipulate currency and influence global events for personal enrichment and world domination is a staple of antisemitic conspiracy theorists. It’s deeply disturbing to see these kinds of conspiracies promoted by a member of Governor Ron DeSantis’ staff. Conspiracy theories, especially those with antisemitic origins, don’t belong in Florida’s highest office — or anywhere in the Sunshine State. We’ll be reaching out to the governor’s office to voice our concerns and discuss the issue.”

Jews and banking in the same sentence? Must be an anti-Semitic trope, as the expression goes. What if Pushaw had actually been bold enough to say something more to the point, like “Israel is trying to drag us into an unnecessary war with Iran”? In any event, the Zionists are preparing their offensive and we of the Israel-as-ally-agnostic community will find the upcoming year to be even more trying as the Jewish state and its friends tighten the screws to eliminate and even criminalize all criticism. Be prepared!

unz.com

It says a lot that AOC wasn’t even able to vote against an Israeli apartheid measure that everyone already knew would pass regardless of her vote.

I mean, how far gone is your progressive revolution if you’re not even allowed to have a perfectly safe performative “no” vote? If even the illusion of opposition is banned?

* * *

People say, “Why pick on AOC when other lawmakers are way worse?”

They’re not worse, they just perform different functions. The Manchins and Sinemas kill leftward movement openly, the AOCs encourage the left to feed their political energy into a party that’s built to kill leftward movement.

It happens that one of these manipulations is much easier for leftwardy-inclined people to see than the other; it’s easier to recognize Manchin and Sinema-type bullshit than AOC-type bullshit. So you’ll see some factions on the left putting special emphasis on pointing out the one that the general public needs a lot more help recognizing.

* * *

I don’t know who needs to hear this but there is no functional difference between a politician who votes a certain way because they want to and a politician who votes a certain way because systemic pressures push them to.

It’s like Trump supporters saying he wanted to fight the Deep State but the Deep State wouldn’t let him. It’s like, okay, so? Who gives a fuck? Either he’s an asshole or an impotent puppet, either way fuck him. Same with AOC and her constant establishment capitulations. Whether they’re serving the empire because they want to or because they have to, it’s clear and undeniable that electoral politics isn’t the way to advance the interests of normal human beings. The system simply does not allow for that.

The absolute least important thing in the universe is how some politician’s feelings are feeling inside. It does not matter what secret intentions they have in their heart. All that matters is what they do. If they can’t do what you need them to, it means they’re useless. Period.

* * *

The single greatest threat to freedom and democracy is not foreign governments, nor the authoritarian measures being implemented by our own governments, but the fact that giant media and tech companies are used to continuously manipulate the way people think about all of those governments.

You are not free if your mind is not free. It doesn’t matter if you were free to say and do whatever you want if the powerful are still actively manipulating the thoughts you think, because all your words and actions will arise from those thoughts. Mental sovereignty comes first.

* * *

In an alternate universe the governments of a parallel Earth responded to the pandemic by pouring money into healthcare systems, transferring wealth from their nations’ richest to their poorest, and saying “Here’s a new vaccine but it’s up to you whether you use it or not.”

* * *

It’s true that knowledge is power. That’s why the powerful work to control people’s access to knowledge through the internet and news media. It’s also why there’s privacy for the powerful and radical transparency for the public, instead of the other way around as it ought to be.

* * *

Biden proclaiming that the US is no longer at war because he moved a few thousand troops out of Afghanistan is the most Trump-like thing that has happened so far in this very Trumpian administration.

* * *

The US is like “We do not seek a new cold war, we simply seek to remain the unipolar dominator of the entire planet and maintain the ability to unilaterally destroy smaller nations which disobey us. And we’ll do anything to accomplish this, including waging a new cold war.”

* * *

George W Bush should never be able to give any speech anywhere without people in the audience cutting him off to yell about his war crimes.

* * *

Invented a highly effective new antidepressant that I hope to get to the market ASAP. It’s not a pill it’s just a big wad of cash taken by force from giant corporations.

* * *

Mothers and nurses work harder than any billionaire on earth.

* * *

People complain about how I do my thing here and say I should do it some other way, and I totally get it. One time I went to an AC/DC concert and they played not one note of smooth jazz. I was so angry.

* * *

We are ruled by a nuclear-armed globe-spanning power structure which is driving our world to its doom in myriad ways and that power structure has somehow seamlessly paced us from fearing terrorists to fearing Russian hackers to fearing anti-vaxxers instead of fearing it.

* * *

Someone who calls you an “anti-vaxxer” for expressing moderate and reasonable human rights concerns about brand new government policies that affect everyone deserves as much respect as someone who calls you an “anti-semite” for voicing legitimate criticisms of Israeli apartheid.

* * *

Having principles means having them even when they don’t further your personal agenda. You may enjoy the sight of having your politics enforced by gunpoint today, but it completely demolishes your voice and integrity when police brutality comes for you tomorrow. Those little self-serving lies that we tell ourselves about how our principles don’t apply here because of blah-blah reason are the levers by which the powerful manipulate us into further and further submission.

* * *

Propaganda works because it plugs into our most fundamental egoic mechanisms: identity and fear. Identify tightly with a group or political faction and you’ll accept propaganda which comes from there. Be driven by fear and that will be used to herd you into power-serving agendas.

If you want to free your mind from the chains of power it’s not enough to do research and memorize a bunch of facts. The most important step to freeing your mind from its shackles is to remove from yourself the psychological hooks to which those shackles are attached.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

When the global COVID-19 vaccination drive kicked off earlier this year, two distinct faultlines gradually emerged, separating the relatively monolithic pro-vaxxer camp from the more heterogeneous assemblage of fence-sitters, sceptics and outright vaccine refuseniks. The new divide reflected a larger chasm that has prevailed since the watershed event of Sept 11 2001. It was a divide between those who lapped up mainstream narratives and those who instinctively questioned them.

Doubts over the novel coronavirus were sown from the onset by scientific data which appeared sketchy, contradictory and outright dodgy.  Big Tech’s digital pogroms against undesirable questions and expert opinions reinforced suspicions further. It was clear that earnest scientific inquiry, which thrives on vigorous debates, will not be tolerated.

This ironically resulted in the “free world” resorting to the likes of TikTok – a Chinese platform once targeted by the Trump administration – to post their opinions and grievances, including a litany of adverse reactions to various vaccines. Despite this, Western elites still have the gall to view themselves as champions of “free speech” even as mass protests against the New Normal roil their cities.

The hypocritical actions of countless leaders, celebrities and “influencers” worldwide who routinely flouted the very lockdowns they had advocated inevitably hardened public scepticism. If there are different sets of norms for the ruling and the ruled, why shouldn’t there be space for divergent opinions over the coronavirus?

The Informed Unvaccinated

A recent MIT study revealed that coronavirus sceptics were generally better-informed and scientifically literate vis-a-vis their vaccinated counterparts. The unvaccinated cohort also appeared more “sophisticated” in the use of “datasets from official sources” as well as “state-of-the-art visualization methods” to interpret the COVID-19 conundrum.  The qualitative contrasts between the pro-vaxxer and unvaccinated camps are nicely encapsulated in this video clip.

Mainstream tirades against vaccine holdouts – including profanity-laden epithets such as “morons” and calls to “remove them from society” – further alarmed the unvaccinated. Faced with such gratuitous hostility, vaccine refuseniks can be forgiven for regarding the growing inoculation divide as one between septic tanks and sceptic camps.

One set is fuelled by an intractable Wokist dogma that seeks to undermine every society along its path of contagion. Information is curated by anonymous fact-checkers with little or no domain-level expertise. Obedience is demanded in its totality; otherwise every molehill will be raised to the level of a Mt. Everest through a hyper-trolled hissy fit. Trying to understand the Wokist mindset is like data-mining a bottomless sewer.

Vaccine sceptics, as the author observed, are generally informed by caution, a spirit of inquiry and a prophylactic approach to the pandemic. They have been boosting their immune systems through a variety of means since the outbreak. The author himself spends up to 3 hours a day on jungle treks!

Sceptics can also quote an impressive array of experts ranging from mRNA technology pioneer Dr Robert Malone, Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Martin Kulldorff to Nobel Prize-winning virologist Dr. Luc Montagnier as well as expert testimonies before US state and federal authorities.  Big Tech and Big Media have not only censored these viewpoints, they may have also played a role in removing cheap, prophylactic drugs like hydroxychloroquine, colchicine and ivermectin from over-the-counter (OTC) pharmacy shelves worldwide. It is considered a heresy to even mention these drugs in the social media. Stricter prescription regimens meant that it was sometimes easier to procure illicit drugs.  If one follows the science of statistics, the results are as predictable as they are depressing: Drug overdoses killed 93,000 Americans in 2020, registering a 30% year-on-year increase.

The global medical gulag ushered in by the New Normal inadvertently brought together like-minded individuals across borders, ethnic divides and language barriers, particularly via the exchange of information that were constantly supressed by Big Tech and Big Media. Examples of successful prophylactic treatment regimens (e.g. Armacao dos Buzios in Brazil) were discovered via these interactions.

Arguments of the Unvaccinated

There are many reasons behind rising pushbacks against an aggressive global vaccine lobby.

To begin with, the approval process for new drugs and medical devices in the United States may take 12 and 7 years respectively while vaccine development traditionally involved a long, complex process that may span 10-15 years.  Nearly all Covid-19 injections flogged worldwide today are experimental vaccines that were developed in less than a year.  Tragic cases like thalidomide babies and the Cutter Incident continue to serve as a cautionary reminder to the unvaccinated. Negative testimonies from families and friends, or from dying patients themselves, are available on TikTok or YouTube alternatives such as BitChute and Brighteon.

Distrust towards official COVID-19 statistics was also fuelled by irrefutable counter-trends. Sweden which had never imposed mandatory lockdowns, masking or mass inoculations is faring much better than its vaccine-obsessed counterparts. Schools were kept open and tourists flowed in. Did Sweden just prove the primacy of herd immunity over vaccines?

As of July 29, the cumulative COVID-19 death toll in Sweden stood at a relative low of 14,617. Yet, during the initial outbreak of the pandemic early last year, the global Ministry of Truth was livid at Sweden’s laissez-faire response. The Nordic redoubt was prophesied to become a “catastrophe” and “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.” Swedish experts were carefully cherry-picked by left-wing bastions to be an echo chamber for the New Normal agenda. For a while, it seemed that the only real science coming out of Sweden were the ones vetted by the incomparably erudite Greta Thunberg.

In the United States, a White House plan for door-to-door vaccination appeared hypocritical in light of a stubborn refusal to reveal the number of “breakthrough” COVID-19 cases among its vaccinated staff. Was contact tracing activated to check on people who may have been infected by these individuals?

With such shocking deficits in government transparency, can one blame sceptics for hypothesizing whether it is the vaccines that are actuating the new coronavirus variants? According to a whistleblower who reportedly accessed raw data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), a mind-blowing 45,000 people have allegedly died from Covid-19 vaccines in the United States. Surely, this figure cannot be true? It is nonetheless a fact that less than 1% of adverse vaccine events are actually reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This leak has sparked a lawsuit led by attorney Thomas Renz against the US federal government. Since a suit has been filed, allegations must be proven in a court of law under the threat of perjury.  At the very least, this action may shed some light on how the opaque VAERS functions. If the lawsuit has any merit – which remains doubtful – another charge may be warranted against the grossly misnamed “fact-checking” industry for being complicit in many deaths.

Scapegoating the Unvaccinated

The renewed COVID-19 surge worldwide has necessitated a predictable scapegoat, going by prevalent liberal logic. CNN’s cherry-picked experts are now labelling the unvaccinated as “variant factories” because “the only source of new coronavirus variants is the body of an infected person.” This leap of logic can also be used to hypothesize whether the LGBTQK community may act as “variant factories” for more contagious HIV strains in the future. After all, as the CNN-channelled logic goes: “All it takes is one mutation in one person.” But one can just hear the accusatory shrieks of “intolerance”, “bigotry”, and “hate” when a specious argument is countered by a more politically-sensitive one.

As for “variant factories”, whatever happened to those pangolins or bats that were allegedly the source of the novel coronavirus?  Bats can travel up to 800kms and may live for more than 20 years. Bats are also the ultimate “variant factories”. If the zoonotic theory of COVID-19 was correct, bats from southern China should have devastated the northern reaches of neighbouring Southeast Asia last year. However, the worst affected nations in the region are further to the south. Coincidentally, these are the countries that unquestioningly follow WHO recommendations. Calls by former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to learn from India’s successful pandemic management have fallen on deaf ears. India had quietly reinstated hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin into the COVID treatment protocol in the face of subtle opposition from its Silicon Valley diaspora.

Scapegoating the unvaccinated as “variant factories” is not only scientifically unproven and ethically deplorable but it criminally likens them to rats carrying a plague. How soon should we wait before the unvaccinated are targeted by mobs inflamed by the “science” of incentivised experts and anonymous fact-checkers?  For a historical precedent, think of the centuries-spanning mob lynching of “plague-carrying Jews”?

In an ironic twist, nearly 84% of new COVID cases in Israel are among vaccinated individuals – as US Senator Ron Johnson pointed out in a recent interview.  Even if this figure is contestable, how come Sweden does not have a problem with the Delta variant? The efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel has steadily dropped from a purported 90% to just 39% in a matter of months.

At the end of the day, the vaccine Rubicon has just widened. If current vaccines aren’t working against new variants, why should the unvaccinated jump headlong into the inoculation bandwagon? Coercive vaccination campaigns may have also permanently eroded trust in healthcare systems worldwide.

activistpost.com

Many Americans who follow developments overseas would concede that Israel and its supporters in the United States exercise a fairly high level of control over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Some are also aware of Congressional attempts to introduce legislation that would define criticism of the Jewish state as a federal hate crime. That would narrow the options for discussion, infringing on First Amendment free speech rights, and further tighten the grip on policy. It would also make violators of the new law subject to fines and even imprisonment at the hands of the Department of Justice, which has traditionally responded favorably on issues of concern to Israel and its supporters.

Still fewer Americans, however, are aware of the ability of the Lobby to promote legislation favorable to Israel and its perceived interests at state and local levels. Possibly the most insidious program being advanced by the friends of Israel is the attempt to make boycotts and public criticism of Israel a punishable offense. Legislation is now in place in many states that requires prospective recipients of government jobs, services or compensation to agree not to participate in boycotting or otherwise seeking to damage the Israeli economy. The details on how the legislation works and what exactly it covers varies from state to state, but the intention is to create disincentives for anyone who seeks to harm Israel as defined by Israel itself. It particularly targets the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is popular on many university campuses. And the prohibition goes beyond just sanctioning those who are taking action personally, as in a number of states one also cannot publicly or even privately encourage others to take action that might be damaging to the Jewish state. In some U.S. states, the recipient must even sign a legal document under oath indicating that he or she will not engage in anti-Israeli activity.

One might well ask by what authority state governments can demand that citizens not be free to discuss or even peacefully oppose the activity engaged in by a foreign government, particularly as the government in question is an apartheid regime that is a serial violator of international law and guilty of numerous war crimes. Indeed, many who have observed the corruption of constitutional government in the United States by Israel and its friends have asked just that and have predictably not received any credible response. Recently, some believers in the Bill of Rights have, however, gone one step further, going to court after refusing to swear fealty to Israel. Highly respected international journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin is one of the latest to do so.

Abby’s tale will strike many as bizarre, but it has been verified by multiple independent sources and is absolutely true. It demonstrates how in 21^st century America government at all levels can strip citizens of their fundamental rights with the stroke or a pen and how the lawmakers will feel absolutely no remorse after they have done so.

In 2016 in Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed off on a law designated SB 327, which is similar to legislation currently active in at least thirty states. The bill is entitled “State Purchasing; prohibit the state from entering into certain contracts unless such contracts contain a certification; does not presently conduct a boycott of Israel” and reads “A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Part 1 of Article 3 of Chapter 5 of Title 50 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to general authority, duties, and procedure relative to state purchasing, so as to prohibit the state, including all of its subdivisions and instrumentalities, from entering into certain contracts with an individual or company unless such contracts contain a certification that such individual or company does not presently conduct a boycott of Israel and will not conduct such a boycott for the duration of such contract; to exclude certain contracts from these requirements; to provide for definitions; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.”

In simple language, the law requires any person or company that enters into a contract with the State of Georgia worth $1,000 or more to sign a loyalty oath pledging not engage in political boycotts of the Israeli government based on its treatment of Palestinians.

Abby Martin had agreed to give the keynote address at the International Critical Media Conference that was to be held at Georgia Southern University in 2020, but her participation was canceled by the authorities controlling the University System of Georgia when she refused to sign the document. Her advocacy for BDS was already well known to college authorities when she agreed to speak. She responded with a lawsuit filed on her behalf by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund seeking to overturn both the decision and the law, arguing that her speech was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Last Monday, Judge Mark Cohen of the Federal District Court in Atlanta ruled in her favor, declaring that the University System of Georgia had violated Martin’s constitutional rights when it cancelled her speaking engagement over her refused to sign the state-mandated oath pledging not to engage in boycotts of Israel, which the court determined to be protected by the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.

The Georgian government defense argued absurdly that it had canceled Martin’s speech because it had “an interest in furthering foreign policy goals regarding relations with Israel.” Dismissing that contention, the judge countered with “Defendants fail to explain how Martin’s advocacy of a boycott of Israel has any bearing on Georgia’s ability to advance foreign policy goals with Israel.” One might also add that the U.S. Constitution grants to the federal government alone the conduct of foreign affairs for the entire United States, so, in a sense, Georgia has no foreign policy.

The judge specifically cited how the law’s clear intention to stifle discussion of BDS “prohibits inherently expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment,” and therefore “burdens Martin’s right to free speech.” He also observed that requiring Martin to sign under oath to refrain from certain otherwise legal activity is “no different than requiring a person to espouse certain political beliefs or to engage in certain political associations.”

Abby Martin was, of course, pleased over the outcome of her case, even though the judge has not yet gone so far as to overturn the law itself. She enthused “I am thrilled at the judge’s decision finding this law unconstitutional as it so clearly violates the free speech rights of myself and so many others in Georgia. My First Amendment rights were restricted on behalf of a foreign government, which flies in the face of the principles of freedom and democracy. The government of Israel has pushed state legislatures to enact these laws only because they know that sympathy and support for the population they brutalize, occupy, ethnically cleanse and subject to apartheid, is finally growing in popular consciousness ––they want to hold back the tide of justice by preemptively restricting the right of American citizens to peacefully take a stand against their crimes.”

Abby Martin’s efforts must be applauded for she has won a major victory in the struggle to maintain freedom of speech in the United States. May it be one of the first in the many battles that will have to be fought to have the courts finally determine decisively that laws drafted by states (and the federal government) specifically to serve Israel’s perceived interests are all unconstitutional and will have to be overturned.

The phrase “rules-based international order” is being used a lot by Washington’s representatives who wish to make clear, as indicated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that they consider the alternative “is a world in which might makes right and winners take all, and that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

No doubt his statement attracted adverse reaction among those in the many countries that have suffered from the crushing effects of U.S. military might, and where violence and instability are now prevalent (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya), but there is no possibility that President Biden will cease his push for the exercise of “global power”, which he has declared to be the “grounding wire of our global policy.”

Mr Biden continued that “we must start with diplomacy rooted in America’s most cherished democratic values : defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity,” but demonstrated reluctance to uphold universal rights by refusing to endorse a UN Security Council Resolution that called for observation of his “most cherished democratic values.” On May 17, as reported by the Times of Israel, fourteen of the Council’s fifteen members expressed “grave concern regarding the crisis related to Gaza and the loss of civilian lives and casualties, and called for de-escalation of the situation, cessation of violence and respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians, especially children.”

Rejection of a resolution calling for “respect for international humanitarian law” is not consistent with Washington’s intention to abide by the “rules-based international order” which is apparently the solution to all the world’s problems — providing the rules are not applied to Israel.

According to the United Nations, in half-a-century the United States has vetoed over fifty draft Security Council resolutions that were critical of Israel, thus ensuring that there is a far more violent and unstable Middle East than there otherwise would have been. Yet on May 7 Secretary Blinken gave a speech at the Security Council in which he said that “human rights and dignity must stay at the core of the international order.” He emphasised that “there are certain rights to which every person, everywhere, is entitled” and that “domestic jurisdiction doesn’t give any state a blank check to enslave, torture, disappear, ethnically cleanse their people, or violate their human rights in any other way.” All of these sentiments are laudable, but the U.S. government is selective in endorsing and applying international law, and Mr Blinken actually admitted that “some of our actions in recent years have undermined the rules-based order and led others to question whether we are still committed to it. Rather than take our word for it, we ask the world to judge our commitment by our actions.”

The Palestinians are indeed questioning Washington’s commitment to the rules-based order, and they and much of the rest of the world (including all fifteen other members of the Security Council) are judging the Biden Administration accordingly.

It is regrettably apparent that President Biden and his appointees and associates are unrelentingly opposed to criticism of Israel for its violations of human rights and dignity. There is no possibility that Mr Biden will take firm action to prevent Israel from taking whatever action it wishes in order to subjugate the Palestinians. To be sure, the random rocketing of southern Israel by the Hamas organisation is reprehensible in the extreme, and even though it has done little damage and caused a tiny number of fatalities (12, compared with 248 Palestinian deaths), it can in no way be recognised as legal.

The Palestinians of Gaza and in all the Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands are subjected to repression and their overall treatment is entirely inconsistent with Mr Biden’s no doubt sincere desire to spread Washington’s “most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.” Even if he wanted to endorse Security Council draft Resolutions that are critical of Israel it would be difficult to do so after Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, declared on May 19 that he “especially appreciated the support of the President of the United States, our friend Joe Biden, for the right of self-defence of the State of Israel.”

In the 2020 election cycle, Mr Biden received political donations totalling $3,249,542 from pro-Israeli groups which gave $17,883,553 to the Democratic Party as a whole, including such amounts as $701,688 to Senator Jon Ossoff and $648,957 to Senator Antone Melton-Meaux. It is difficult to see how any legislator who received such generous contributions could be critical of the country in whose cause the money was provided — and the supporters of Israel in the U.S. are open about their objectives.

The Mission Statement of the organisation Pro-Israel America includes the aim of “Promoting and supporting the election of pro-Israel candidates to federal office, regardless of party” and it is interesting to consider what indignation would be expressed if supporters of some other countries had made a similar pronouncement. In a piece about allegations of Russian “interference” in the 2020 elections in the New York Times of March 16, it was stated that “Besides Russia, Iran and other countries also sought to sway the election, the [official intelligence] report said.” But there isn’t a word about Israel’s meddling by money.

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, issued a statement declaring that “Foreign malign influence is an enduring challenge facing our country. These efforts by U.S. adversaries seek to exacerbate divisions and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” But the Pro-Israel America grouping does exactly this, and announced that it had had an “outsized impact in the 2020 Congressional elections, securing a strong base of support on both sides of the aisle for the U.S.-Israel relationship,” being instrumental in sending “70 pro-Israel champions” to Congress.

There are no rules and order detectable in that example of dabbling in U.S. politics, but the Director of National Intelligence obviously does not consider that the Pro-Israel America organisation — which is only one of twenty such Israel-supporting political pressure groups — is obviously intent on “exacerbating divisions… in our democratic institutions.”

On May 22 the situation in occupied Palestine was well-described in the New York Times whose reporters wrote that “Palestinians from all walks of life routinely experience exasperating impossibilities and petty humiliations, bureaucratic controls that force agonizing choices, and the fragility and cruelty of life under military rule, now in its second half-century.” And when the cruelty surges, and the Palestinians are goaded to retaliation, there is all-out violence as there has been recently. As one Palestinian told the Times, “We can’t take an M-16 and go kill every settler. All we have are those stones. A bullet can kill you instantly. A little stone won’t do much. But at least I’m sending a message.”

The message to President Biden is that there must be rules and order in Israel and its illegally occupied Palestinian territories and that his statements and policies are not consistent with establishment of justice. It cannot be forgotten that he once declared “I am a Zionist” and that, as noted above, he got over three million dollars from U.S. supporters of Israel and its policies as regards the persecution of Palestinians.

Mr Biden says he is intent on “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity,” but as Stratfor noted on May 22, “President Biden has chosen not to prioritize the decades-long struggle that has defied multiple attempts by his predecessors to bring about peace.” So Washington is sitting on the fence, which isn’t a good posture from which to try to demonstrate affinity for a “rules-based international order.” Israel-Palestine will again erupt in savagery and more innocent lives will be destroyed. But the Israeli lobby groups in Washington will continue to make the rules. That’s what politics is all about.

Demonstrating the power the ultranationalist Ukraine lobby has attained in Biden’s Washington, the White House has withdrawn consideration of esteemed Russia specialist Matthew Rojansky.

By Moss ROBESON

Matthew Rojansky is the head of the Kennan Institute, a notable think tank at the US government-funded Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. Despite his well-established expertise on Russia and lengthy record of leadership on the issue, he has been judged “too soft” to work in the Biden White House.

An increasingly influential element within Washington’s powerful anti-Russian lobby is taking a victory lap after Politico credited it for helping to block Rojanksy’s appointment to Russia director at the National Security Council. It is the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an organization with close ties to the extremist Banderite movement.

The UCCA made its opposition to Rojansky known in the form of an “emphatic request” to President Joseph Biden, accusing the veteran Russia hand of making unspecified “incendiary comments over the years” which supposedly indicated that “Ukraine is expendable to secure closer U.S.-Russia relations.”

Meanwhile, the Chicago-based leadership of the Illinois Division of the UCCA fired off indignant letters of protest to President Biden and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), co-chair of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, which was founded in 2015 on the initiative of the UCCA.

The Chicago leaders objected to Rojansky’s seemingly benign observation that “peaceful coexistence [with Russia] remains an imperative,” likening the statement to “appeasement.” They also baselessly suggested that Rojansky might be “influenced because of overt or covert financial support from Russia.”

As the director of the Kennan Institute since 2013, Rojansky is far from the pro-Kremlin boogeyman he’s been made out to be by his most rabid antagonists. If anything, he represents the legacy of the man his employer is named for: George Kennan, the architect of the post-war US policy of containing the Soviet Union. But in a Biden administration dominated by anti-Russia hardliners, it appears even Kennan – who criticized NATO’s eastward expansion after the Soviet Union’s collapse as a “fateful error” – would be unwelcome.

The Banderites take over the UCCA

It is also no secret that the UCCA has for decades been led by cult-like followers of the late Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator whose devotees carried out numerous genocidal pogroms against his country’s Jewish population.

Bandera’s “Revolutionary” faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B a.k.a. OUN-R) participated in the Nazi “Holocaust by Bullets” in western Ukraine. Since then, it has hijacked the organized Ukrainian diaspora, and cozied up to much of the US foreign policy establishment, not to mention the far-right in Ukraine.

In 1980, a coordinating body of OUN-B “facade structures” formerly known as the “Ukrainian Liberation Front” staged a divisive coup in the UCCA, from which the organization has never fully recovered.

1980 convention of the UCCA (Ukrainian Weekly, October 19, 1980)

The Banderites continue to play a leading role in the UCCA under the umbrella of the U.S. Division of the so-called “International Council in Support of Ukraine,” the successor of the “Liberation Front,” which relocated its headquarters from New York to Toronto in 2013. (The Grayzone previously reported on the Canadian Division’s ties to the Conservative Party of Canada.)

Days before he passed away in August 2019, Jaroslaw Fedun, a 45-year member of the UCCA and the chairman of its audit committee, filed a complaint with the New York State Charities Bureau about the “egregious improprieties” of the UCCA.

A self-described “son of pioneers” of the Ukrainian community in New York City received Fedun’s complaint just before he died and submitted it on his behalf.

In a second complaint to the Charities Bureau dated September 28, 2019, Fedun’s anonymous confidant further alleged in a sensational manifesto that “most of [the] UCCA Board members and all of its employees are OUN(R) members.” He described the Banderites as a “group of individuals with a hidden extremist agenda.”

Throughout the Cold War, the UCCA waged war on Kennan’s containment strategy, condemning it as a form of appeasement while advocating a policy of rollback that could have resulted in all-out war.

“The collapse of Kennanism in this country is a good sign,” Lev Dobriansky, a former president of the UCCA and co-founder of the right-wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, once remarked. Dobriansky was a close ally of Yaroslav Stetsko, a notorious Nazi collaborator who succeeded Bandera as leader of the OUN-B.

In the 1960s, Dobriansky and other UCCA leaders even lambasted a rival OUN faction that had been backed by the CIA as too soft on communism. Despite its history of extremism, the UCCA has apparently attained considerable influence over the Biden administration, while realists like Rojansky have been effectively blacklisted.

Recycling a Ukrainian smear campaign against Rojansky

On April 10, 2021, Axios broke the news of Rojansky’s potential appointment in the form of a hit job, prompting fugitive vulture capitalist Bill Browder to assert that jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny “is as good as dead” if the Biden administration appointed Rojansky.

The Axios article also triggered outrage from Banderite circles. Ihor Dlaboha, editor of a UCCA publication and formerly the National Tribune – the official Banderite newspaper in the US – tweeted that “#Biden is making a big mistake… @POTUS would lose [Ukrainian] voter favor. Stay the course.”

Meanwhile, the DC and Chicago-based leaderships of the Congress Committee wrote to President Biden and Senator Durbin within 48 hours of the Axios article’s publication. For his part, UCCA communications director Andrij Dobriansky (no relation to Lev) condemned Rojansky’s appointment as “disastrous.”

While the NSC averts a disastrous appointment, @UkrCongComAm continues to advocate for increased military assistance of Ukraine #UnitedForUkraine #StopRussianAggression – https://t.co/ee7jHAsjUT pic.twitter.com/brKIk7Pj17

— Andrij Dobriansky (@tufkaa) April 19, 2021

These are some of the supposedly controversial statements made by Matthew Rojansky, according to Axios:

In 2017, Rojansky decried America’s “Cold War style paranoia about the Russian bogeyman,” acknowledging that Putin “is a huge problem for the United States” while arguing that escalation carries “unacceptable risks.” He has consistently called for managing competition with Russia in a way that protects U.S. interests and minimizes risks.

“Russia is not going to go away,” Rojansky wrote in a National Interest op-ed last year criticizing what he characterized as the overuse of sanctions. “Peaceful coexistence remains an imperative, no matter how unsavory Putin’s regime might be.”

The Axios attack piece also recycled a Ukrainian nationalist smear campaign against Rojansky and the Kennan Institute.

In 2018, Ukrainian alumni of the Kennan Institute issued an angry open letter after Rojansky hired a new Ukraine director, Mykhailo Minakov. Among Minakov’s sins, according to the Ukrainians, was writing that “the [2013-14] ‘Revolutionary of Dignity’ had led to shameless corruption, militant nationalism and a decline in freedoms.” While this seemed like a fairly objective assessment of a post-Maidan Ukraine that has become the poorest country in Europe, the letter’s signatories accused Rojansky of presiding over “growing pro-Kremlin policies.” The campaign against Minakov ultimately prompted the Kennan Institute to close its office in Kyiv.

Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko has characterized the open letter cited by Axios as “a disgusting attack on academic freedom.” Canadian historian David Marples similarly protested that “the attack on Minakov, which is ad hominen, has no substance or merit. He is a brilliant scholar who does not follow the masses.”

Ishchenko, Marples, and more than 50 other academics from around the world signed a letter of support for Mykhailo Minakov, which went unmentioned by Axios, and concluded:

At issue is the assumption, implied in the Letter and all-too prevalent in the current climate, that public discourse is a zero-sum game, in which a contrarian view necessarily places someone in the opposing camp, namely, with the Russian state.

We wish to stress that respecting intellectual freedom to critique policies and urge reforms without being called an agent of the Kremlin is not only a right in the open and liberal society that Ukrainians wish to live in but also a condition of its existence.

We have no doubt that Professor Minakov is deeply devoted to a vision of Ukraine as a free, democratic, inclusive and open society and that his life-long commitment to the study of Ukraine and to advancing the Ukrainian cause internationally is unquestionable.

The Ukrainian ultranationalist lobby vs. “Kennanism”

As it were, George Kennan, the namesake of the think tank that Matthew Rojansky runs, and the architect of Washington’s anti-Soviet “containment strategy,” made many enemies in his day in the nationalist UCCA.

“The collapse of Kennanism in this country is a good sign,” once declared Lev Dobriansky (1918-2008), a co-founder of the infamous Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the longtime president of the UCCA, who hailed from Manhattan’s once-vibrant, nationalistic Little Ukraine neighborhood.

By 1966, the CIA began to grow concerned, reporting that “Dobriansky has become more and more under the influence of the Bandera people.” In fact a key US ally of the OUN-B, and probably the most influential Ukrainian American in the militant “New Right movement” in the Republican Party, Lev Dobriansky was connected to numerous radical anticommunist networks in the US and abroad.

As the de facto spokesperson for Ukrainian nationalists in the United States, Dobriansky denounced Kennan’s containment strategy as an “intrinsically policyless policy of quasi-appeasement” that was “founded on the discredited belief that the two worlds – that of Soviet tyranny and the non-communist world – can live in a mutual state of co-existence.”

In 1982, two years after Dobriansky helped orchestrate the OUN-B takeover of the UCCA, he was appointed as US Ambassador to the Bahamas by President Ronald Reagan. By all indications, the Biden administration will be the most amenable to the UCCA since Reagan opened the door to the Banderite movement.

On Russia and Ukraine, no debate allowed

A March 2021 policy conference in Washington highlighted the growing bond between the Banderite movement and belligerent Beltway foreign policy figures tied to the Democratic Party.

Called, “Divining the New Administration’s Approach to Ukraine’s Most Pressing Security Issues,” the gathering was co-sponsored by the UCCA and organized by the Center for US-Ukrainian Relations (CUSUR), which is tied to the hip of the Banderite OUN-B.

October 2019 Banderite pilgrimage to Stepan Bandera’s grave in Munich—circled left to right, leading Ukrainian American OUN-B members: Pavlo Bandriwsky, UCCA-Illinois vice president; Bohdan Harhaj, UCCA Audit Committee member; Walter Zaryckyj, CUSUR executive director; and Borys Potapenko, chairman of the International Council in Support of Ukraine, headquartered in Toronto.

Several “experts” from the NATO-funded Atlantic Council participated in the Banderite-run event. They included Anders Åslund, the neoliberal and often clownish economist who participated in the US-organized looting of Russia’s economy during the 1990’s. True to form, Åslund smeared Rojansky as not only an uninformed Putin apologist, but as a potential Russian agent.

Meanwhile, Atlantic Council senior fellow Melinda Haring warned of “impending disaster and disfunction,” predicting that Rojansky would “clash” with the “very hawkish,” “savvy operator” Victoria Nuland. In other words, he might balance the notoriously neoconservative tendencies of the former Obama State Department advisor who is widely seen as having stage managed the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine.

Haring and her Atlantic Council colleague, former US ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, sat silently while retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army Europe in 2014-18, denied that millions of Russians died in World War II.

.@CEPA‘s @general_ben addressing a conference organized by the OUN-B affiliated Center for US-Ukrainian Relations, March 3, 2021: “…of course it was actually millions of Ukrainians, not millions of Russians, that died during the Second World War…” (https://t.co/NTu6yhIxG2) pic.twitter.com/t003cT8bpZ

— Bandera Lobby Blog (@mossrobeson__) March 30, 2021

During a previous panel, Atlantic Council senior fellow Daniel Fried also said nothing in response to his co-panelist, the nationalist Ukrainian politician, Hanna Hopko, sharing her goal of balkanizing Russia as Nazi Germany once aspired to do.

Hannah Hopko’s co-panelists react to her dreaming of balkanizing Russia. CUSUR’s longtime executive director Walter Zaryckyj is allegedly the U.S. leader of OUN-B, and Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal revealed Herman Pirchner to be an inner circle member of the ultra-secretive Council for National Policy. As a college student, Adrian Karatnycky worked part-time for the Ukrainian CIA front that Lev Dobriansky denounced in the 1960s

Laughing in the video is leading OUN-B member Walter Zaryckyj, formerly a member of the Banderite-led Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, some of the fringe elements of which, including its Idel-Ural committee, originated in Alfred Rosenberg’s Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories https://t.co/bbMfCkqGn2 pic.twitter.com/QA8D8wjpJi

— Bandera Lobby Blog (@mossrobeson__) April 3, 2021

During the CUSUR event, Fried explained why New Cold Warriors like himself could never accept the appointment of someone like Rojansky. On issues related to Ukraine and Russia, Fried said the Biden administration “will not be a return to the Obama administration. It will be a return to the best sides of the Obama administration, without some of the disheartening debates that happened internally.”

Pointing to anti-Russia hardliners like Nuland and Secretary of State Tony Blinken as the “best sides of the Obama administration,” Fried articulated what has been made crystal clear by the Rojansky controversy. Having taken US-Russia relations to its post-Cold War nadir, the Russia hawks and their Ukrainian nationalist partners will be satisfied by nothing less than total control over Joe Biden’s foreign policy.

Tony Blinken and Hannah Hopko, 2015

thegrayzone.com

Donald Trump, who was elected President of the United States in 2016, may have won due to voters attracted by his pledge to end many of the “stupid” wars that the American military was involved in worldwide. In the event, however, he ended no wars in spite of several attempts to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria, and almost started new conflicts with cruise missile attacks and the assassination of an Iranian general. Trump was consistently outmaneuvered by his “experts” on the National Security Council and at the Pentagon, who insisted that it was too early to disengage from the Middle East and Central Asia, that America’s own national security would be threatened.

Trump did not have either the experience or the grit necessary to override his generals and national security team, so he deferred to their judgement. And as has been well documented he was under constant pressure to do Israel’s bidding in the region, which mandated a continued substantial US military presence to protect the Jewish state and to provide cover for the regular attacks staged by the Israelis against several of their neighbors. Motivated by the substantial political donations coming from multi-billionaires like casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Trump conceded more to Israel than any previous president, recognizing Jerusalem as the country’s capital as well as Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights while also giving the green light to settlement expansion and eventual incorporation of all of the occupied West Bank into Greater Israel.

President Joe Biden has already indicated that he will if anything out-do Trump when it comes to favoring America’s persistent “ally” and “best friend” in the Middle East. Biden, who has declared himself to be a “Zionist,” is responding to the same lobbying and media power that Israel’s friends are able to assert over any US national government. In addition, his own Democratic Party in Congress is also the home of most of the federal government’s genuine Zionists, namely the numerous mostly Jewish legislators who have long dedicated themselves to advancing Israeli interests. Finally, Biden has chosen to surround himself with large numbers of Jewish appointed officials as his foreign policy and national security team, many of whom have close and enduring personal ties to Israel, to include service in the Israeli Army.

The new Secretary of Defense, former Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin has recently returned from a trip to Israel, where he confirmed one’s worst fears about the direction the Biden Administration is moving in. It was a first visit to Israel by a Biden Administration cabinet member. Austin met with his counterpart Benny Gantz and also with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, both of whom warned him that Israel considered renewal of any nuclear arms limitation agreement with Iran to be a threat, only delaying development of a weapon. As Bibi expressed it, “Iran has never given up its quest for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel.”

Austin responded by the usual two-step avoiding Israel’s expressed concerns, which might be considered a threat of an Israeli veto on Biden’s attempt to revert to the original 2015 JCPOA multilateral pact. He said that the Biden administration would continue to guarantee Israel’s “qualitative military edge” as an element in America’s “strong commitment to Israel and the Israeli people,” adding that “our bilateral relationship with Israel in particular is central to regional stability and security in the Middle East. During our meeting I reaffirmed to Minister Gantz our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is ironclad.”

Wrong answer general. The foreign policy of any country should be based on actual interests, not on political donations and effective lobbying, still less on what one reads in the Zionist mainstream media in the US. Netanyahu has stated that the Iran agreement is “fatally flawed” and has said recently that “History has taught us that deals like this, with extremist regimes like this, are worth nothing.” Israel, which uniquely has a secret nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, is one of the world’s leading violators of attempts to limit nuclear proliferation. It is also destabilizing to the entire Middle East region, an apartheid state – not a democracy – and its government is widely regarded as right-wing extremist. That Netanyahu should feel somehow empowered to talk down to the Iranians, and to the US, remains a mystery.

Beyond what goes on between Washington and Jerusalem, the real center of power, the Israel Lobby, consists of a large number of separate organizations that act collectively to advance Israeli interests. There is considerable corruption in the process, with cooperative congressmen being rewarded while those who resist are targeted for replacement. Much of the legwork on subverting Capitol Hill and the White House is done by foundations, which often pretend to be educational to obtain tax exempt status. “Experts” from the various pro-Israel groups are then seeded into the decision-making process of the federal government, serving as gatekeepers to prevent consideration of any legislation that might be objected to by Netanyahu.

One of the most active lobbying groups is the so-called Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) which is in fact closely tied to and takes direction from the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FDD is particularly focused on going to war with Iran and whenever there are discussions on Iran policy on Capitol Hill one can be sure that an FDD expert will be present and active.

And if you really want to know why America’s foreign policy has been so self-destructive, it has recently been learned that FDD was actually able to insert one of its employees into the National Security Council under Donald Trump. According to a report on Bloomberg, Richard Goldberg, an outspoken anti-Iran hawk and former associate of John Bolton, is leaving the council and would be returning “to [the Foundation for Defense of Democracies], which continued to pay his salary during his time on the National Security Council.”

The NSC exists to provide the president with the best possible intelligence and analysis available for dealing with problem areas, something that Goldberg, due to his conflict of interest, would have been unlikely to provide, particularly as he was still on the FDD payroll and was also being given generous travel expenses while working for the government. Whether he was also being paid by the NSC, which is referred to as “double dipping,” is not known. In any event, there is something very wrong about the appointment of a paid partisan who seeks war with a particular country to a vital national security position where objectivity is an imperative. Ned Price, former special assistant to President Obama on national security, commented “…we now know a White House point person on Iran policy was receiving a salary from and remained employed by an organization that has put forward some of the most extreme and dangerous pro-regime change policies.”

So Biden, like presidents before him, is caught in the trap between an extremist-dominated Israel itself and its demonic prime minister on one side and the all-powerful domestic Israel Lobby on the other. Unfortunately, one cannot expect the United States to get out from under the Israeli thumb no matter whom is elected president.

I am, of course, referring to Israel. It does not require a brilliant observer to note how Israel and its allies inside the U.S. have become very skilled at milking the government in the United States at all levels for every bit of financial aid, trade concessions, military hardware and political cover that is possible to obtain. The flow of dollars, goods, and protection is never actually debated in any serious way and is often, in fact, negotiated directly by Congress or state legislatures directly with the Israeli lobbyists. This corruption and manipulation of the U.S. governmental system by people who are basically foreign agents is something like a criminal enterprise and one can only imagine the screams of outrage coming from the New York Times if there were a similar arrangement with any other country.

The latest revelation about Israel’s cheating involves subsidies that were paid covertly by Israeli government agencies to groups in the United States which in turn took direction from the Jewish state, often inter alia damaging genuine American interests. The groups involved failed to disclose the payments, which is a felony. They also failed to register under the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which mandates penalties for groups and individuals acting on behalf of foreign governments. In particular, FARA mandates that the finances and relationships of the foreign affiliated organization be open to Department of the Justice inspection. It states that “any person who acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or otherwise acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal.” Those who fail to disclose might be penalized by up to five years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

Israel’s various friends and proxies, uniquely, have been de facto exempt from any regulation by the U.S. government. The last serious attempt to register a major lobbying entity was made by John F. Kennedy, who sought to have the predecessor organization to today’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) comply with FARA. Kennedy was killed before he could complete the process.

To be sure, the U.S. government has recently been aggressive in demanding FARA registration for other nations as well as for Americans working for foreign powers. There have been several prominent FARA cases in the news. Major Russian news agencies operating in the U.S. were compelled to register in 2017 because they were funded largely or in part by the Kremlin. Also, as part of their plea deals, the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn both conceded that they had failed to comply with FARA when working as consultants with foreign governments.

A leading recipient of the Israeli government’s largesse has been the Israel Allies Foundation (IAF), which has a presence in 43 countries worldwide, though it is registered in the U.S. as a non-profit. It received a grant of $100,000 from Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry in 2019, part of the $6.6 million that was doled out to eleven American organizations in 2018-9. Israel Allies particularly uses Lawfare to target the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which has a large and growing presence on university campuses. Effective lobbying by IAF in the U.S. has resulted in more than half of all states passing legislation that bans or limits the BDS activity while legislation that would criminalize organizations working against Israel has also been moving through congress. IAF has been directly involved in drafting such legislation and has more recently been pushing for new laws that would legally define criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.

The Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs initially, in 2015-7, tried to give money openly to diaspora organizations but found that many American Jewish groups, to their credit, would not take it due to concerns over FARA and being accused of “dual loyalty.” So, the Ministry created an ostensibly non-government “public benefit company” cut-out to distribute the cash in a more secretive fashion. The mechanism was given the operational name Concert.

Concert’s sole purpose was to provide money to diaspora advocacy groups that would work primarily against BDS and other efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Concert had an independent board, but its activity of directed by the Strategic Affairs Ministry’s director-general.

Concert’s internal documents are predictably vague in describing the activities that it was funding, and one might assume that they are purposely misleading. They refer to “defensive and offensive” actions, on “corporate responsibility,” “the digital battlefield,” and regarding “amplification units” that would provide “support for organizations in a pro-Israeli network.” The intention was to improve Israel’s image due to the widespread and completely accurate perception that its human rights record is among the worst in the world. Concert was created to serve as a mechanism to be exploited where situations prevailed that “require an ‘outside the government’ discussion with the different target audiences… [and] provide a rapid and coordinated response against the attempts to tarnish the image of Israel around the world.”

Interestingly, one of the most recognizable recipients of Concert funds was Christians United for Israel (CUFI), America’s largest pro-Israel group, which received nearly $1.3 million in February 2019 to pay for several 10 week-long “pilgrimages” to the Holy Land. Each pilgrimage involved thirty “influential Christian clerics from the U.S.” who were clearly propagandized while they were in the Middle East. Other large disbursements went to predominantly Jewish student groups, presumably to provide them with both resources and necessary training to oppose campus critics of Israel.

The simple way to deal with the massive and illegal Israeli influencing operations that are being directed against the United States would be first of all to deduct every identifiable dollar that is being spent by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to empower supporters in America from the $3.8 billion plus that Israel receives each year directly from the U.S. Treasury. Israel would not be concerned if the United States were to recover a paltry $10 million or so, but it would definitely send a message.

And then one might follow-up by requiring all the Israeli proxies that together make up the Israel Lobby to register under FARA. One might start with AIPAC, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) but there will be many, many more before the work is done. And CUFI, for sure. The fundamentalist Christian head cases that place Israel’s interests ahead of those of their own country finally need to have their bell rung.