Wallwritings

“Congress is Israeli-Occupied Territory”; You Got a Problem With That?

Posted on May 4, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

Update from final day of AIPAC Conference May 5

Speeches on the final day brought some surprising speeches. Go to the internet and click the following for Phil Weiss’ coverage of speeches by Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry, and a comment on views on the two state solution. This was definitely not your typical White House-orchestrated response to AIPAC.

It is Springtime in the nation’s capitol. The cherry trees are in bloom. And once again, just after the robins return, AIPAC gathers for its annual conference, May 3-5.

AIPAC, in case you have just arrived from Mars, is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby which gives the U.S. Congress its marching orders on all matters pertaining to the best interests of the state of Israel.

If you have to ask if AIPAC is also concerned with the best interests of the people of the United States, conservative pundit Pat Buchanan has news for you:

The U.S. Congress is “Israeli-occupied territory”.

Occupiers, as the Palestinian people can testify, have only the best interests of the Occupier at heart.

AIPAC is not shy about touting its influence in Washington. A news release on its website describes the 2009 opening program:

While Washington, D.C., is increasingly consumed with bickering between Democrats and Republicans, the U.S.-Israel relationship remains the one issue that transcends the partisan divide. In a display of this bipartisan spirit, more than half of Congress will attend tonight’s Gala Banquet, which will fill a room large enough to fit the Washington Monument on its side.

Four top Congressional leaders will address banquet attendees: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA).

In addition, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will wake up in the middle of the night in Israel (or stay up quite late) in order to address the Gala Banquet live via satellite. The prime minister’s speech will be his first to an American audience since becoming the Jewish state’s head of government earlier this year.

California Congresswoman Jane Harman was an opening night panelist . Yes, that Jane Harman who was so outraged because as an American citizen she claimed she was illegally “wire tapped” by the FBI. Nothing illegal about it, as Harman must have known, but she also knew the MSM would not know the difference. The Congresswoman was speaking on the phone with a suspect the FBI had FISA approval to tap.

In her 2005 recorded conversation Harman agreed to “waddle into” the federal conspiracy case against two former AIPAC staffers. When CQ revealed Harman’s role in the wire tap, she went on a media blitz to deny everything, contradicting herself on several key points.

Fortunately, for her political career, the Obama Justice Department has decided to drop the case against the former AIPAC staffers. That removes her from future court testimony, and not so incidentally, makes the point that court cases aimed at AIPAC are risky endeavors for the U.S. justice system.

It is hard to prove conspiracy when you are giving secrets to your closest friends. This is especially true when those “friends” are free to send their diplomats into your country to influence your public against another nation. Tikun Olam has a good example of this influence peddling.

Antiwar.com blogger Justin Raimondo notes three other recent AIPAC “victories”: The barring from Obama’s government of Charles “Chas” Freeman as chair of the National Intelligence Council, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Obama’s first choice as ambassador to Iraq, and the return to power of Dennis Ross, a strongly pro-Israel U.S. diplomat who now has a State Department assignment that puts him squarely in the middle of future Iran negotiations.

These victories, which were barely noticed by the MSM, no doubt emboldened AIPAC operatives as they presented this year’s AIPAC prime theme to this year’s delegates. The theme: Provoke Iran.

Of course, AIPAC will not be that blatant. This is, after all, the U.S. Congress that is being told what to do, so the instructions will focus on a piece of legislation that carries the innocuous title, the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act.

The Act would “enact tough new sanctions” against Iran. Putting its best pro-Israel spin on the sanctions, Spero News writes:

The sanctions are another attempt to avert a military confrontation between Jerusalem and Teheran over the latter’s nuclear ambitions. Iran has consistently threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” and to block the strategic oil passage at the Strait of Hormuz which would immobilize the American economy within weeks.

Justin Raimondo looks behind the curtain:

The focus of the conference, and the legislative centerpiece of the event, will be passage of the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act, which would ban US companies from providing Iran with refined petroleum products, and seeks to punish European companies — particularly the Swiss, who come in for two specific mentions in the text of the bill — for doing so.

To begin with, the name affixed to this piece of legislative legerdemain is a prime example of congressional doublethink: will it really enhance diplomatic relations with Iran to impose draconian sanctions, the equivalent of an economic chokehold and a prelude to a military blockade? Hardly, and that is very far from its clear intent.

Raimondo points out that the real purpose of the Act is to provoke Iran and to mitigate against any Obama efforts to reach a peaceful understanding with Teheran. Why, he asks, is the Act packaged in this egregious manner?

Because, he writes, “the American people are sick and tired of war, and preparations for war, and so it is far less incriminating if a member of Congress can say he (or she) voted for “the Iran Diplomatic Enhancement Act” than it is to admit they supported isolating Iran economically.”

A version of this egregious Act was “shelved” by Congress in September, 2008, thanks, according to Common Dreams.org, to “an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups.”

That defeat was a rare setback for AIPAC, which promptly made the Act its legislative priority for 2009. Jim Lobe predicted in CommonDreams.org that the act would not go away.

”We’ll resubmit it when Congress comes back, and we’ll have even more signatures,” the resolution’s main author, New York Democrat Rep. Gary Ackerman, told the Washington Times, adding that the resolution currently has 270 co-sponsors, or some two-thirds of the House’s entire membership.

Still, the decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.

This year, Iran is on the AIPAC agenda. Six years ago, officially, Iraq was not on the 2003 AIPAC agenda. The game plan in 2003 was for Israel to pretend a neutrality in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Israel would stay out of the Coalition of the Willing. That was the official 2003 plan.

But unofficially, well, let Dana Milbanks explain the action behind the Wizard’s curtain:

As delegates to the AIPAC meeting were heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming: “Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq.” The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the “Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle” is being used “by U.S. soldiers in Iraq.”

You got that? Israel was “neutral”, but the Coalition Forces knew who had their back. This was six years ago, friends, when the Bush-Cheney team was lying to the world about WMD’s being the motivation for the war.

It is pro forma that Israeli government will show up at every AIPAC conference, presenting an annual tableau of a foreign nation sending its leaders to meet with a pro-Israel lobby to shape U.S. foreign policy in Israel’s best interests.

In 2003, the cheerleading was led by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. Milbanks again:

At an AIPAC session on Sunday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom proclaimed in a speech praising Secretary of State Colin L. Powell: “We have followed with great admiration your efforts to mobilize the international community to disarm Iraq and bring democracy and peace to the region, to the Middle East and to the rest of the world. Just imagine, Mr. Secretary, how much easier it would have been if Israel had been a member of the Security Council.”

The foreign minister did not have to go, hat in hand, to Foggy Bottom, to deliver that message to the U.S. Secretary of State. Colin Powell came to him, along with some of his closest government colleagues:

A parade of top Bush administration officials — Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns — appeared before the AIPAC audience. The officials won sustained cheers for their jabs at European opponents of war in Iraq, and their tough remarks aimed at two perennial foes of Israel, Syria and Iran.

Six AIPAC conferences later, Israel has another foreign war it wants the U.S. to fight. Your mission, Uncle Sam, should you decide to accept it, is to use your vast military power to do to Iran what you did to Iraq. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.

Thomas More: “I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake”

Posted on April 30, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

In his press conference Wednesday night, President Obama was asked two questions about torture. In his first answer he referred to an article he read recently. His staff did not initially provide the source, but Huffington Post suggests his source could have been a blog posting by Andrew Sullivan:

In his blog, The Daily Dish, Sullivan wrote:

Most ordinary people lived through the Blitz, a random 9/11 a week, from an army poised to invade, and turn England’s democratic heritage into a footnote in a Nazi empire.

As all that was happening, and as intelligence was vital, the British captured over 500 enemy spies operating in Britain and elsewhere. Most went through Camp 020, a Victorian pile crammed with interrogators. As Britain’s very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting.

Responding to a second torture question: “Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?” Obama ignored the “previous administration” reference, evoking instead the Churchillian rationale:

What I’ve said — and I will repeat — is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don’t think that’s just my opinion; that’s the opinion of many who’ve examined the topic. And that’s why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, “We don’t torture,” when the entire British — all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

And then the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking short-cuts, over time, that corrodes what’s — what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

And — and so I strongly believed that the steps that we’ve taken to prevent these kinds of enhanced interrogation techniques will make us stronger over the long term and make us safer over the long term because it will put us in a — in a position where we can still get information.

In some cases, it may be harder, but part of what makes us, I think, still a beacon to the world is that we are willing to hold true to our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.

At the same time, it takes away a critical recruitment tool that Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians.

And it makes us — it puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international, coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these networks.

So this is a decision that I’m very comfortable with. And I think the American people over time will recognize that it is better for us to stick to who we are, even when we’re taking on an unscrupulous enemy.

Later, in the press conference the subject was revisited :

QUESTION; Did you read the documents recently referred to by former Vice President Cheney and others saying that the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” not only protected the nation but saved lives?

And if part of the United States were under imminent threat, could you envision yourself ever authorizing the use of those enhanced interrogation techniques?

OBAMA: I have read the documents. Now they have not been officially declassified and released. And so I don’t want to go to the details of them. But here’s what I can tell you, that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques, which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques, doesn’t answer the core question.

Which is, could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn’t answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

So when I made the decision to release these memos and when I made the decision to bar these practices, this was based on consultation with my entire national security team, and based on my understanding that ultimately I will be judged as commander-in-chief on how safe I’m keeping the American people.

That’s the responsibility I wake up with and it’s the responsibility I go to sleep with. And so I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe. But I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking short cuts that undermine who we are.

That is the right answer. Taking shortcuts that “undermine who we are” takes us in the wrong direction.

The President’s stand on principle echoes the experience of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Lord Chancellor of England, whose whose real life story is told in the 1966 film, A Man for All Seasons.

Early in the film, Cardinal Wolsley (played by Orson Welles) summons More (Paul Scofield) to his palace. The Cardinal needs More to help him persuade the Pope to grant King Henry the right to divorce his wife.

The Cardinal argues that the divorce is for the benefit of both king and country. Henry has no male heir; he expects a new wife to provide him with one. More responds: “No, Your Grace, I’m not going to help you.” An angry Cardinal Wolsey insists that if More could see “facts flat on” without his “horrible moral squint”, he “might have made a statesman,” evoking this calm rebuke from More:

“I think that when statesmen forsake their own private consciences for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to choas.”

In another pivotal moment later in the film, William Roper (Corin Redgrave) visits Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) to ask for permission to marry his daughter Meg (Susannah York).

In this clip from the film, More receives a second visitor, a weak and amoral man, Richard Rich (John Hurt), who first warns Sir Thomas that he is surrounded by spies (of which Rich is surely one), then begs More for a job.

Rejected, Rich leaves. More’s daughter shouts at her father that Rich should be arrested for being a “bad man”. More refuses, and insists Rich should remain free: “Go he should. If he were the devil himself, until he broke the law”.

WILLIAM ROPER: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

SIR THOMAS MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

The debate will continue over how to treat those who were responsible for torture during the Bush presidency. Meanwhile, the Congress could investigate and the Attorney General could prosecute. But the chief executive has made his position clear.

He opposes torture because it is wrong, ineffective, and unworthy of a nation of laws. He intends to carry out his duty to protect the American people by living up to the highest values of this democracy. It is a stand that is both pragmatic and principled.

Posted in Movies, Politics and Elections | 4 Comments

Arlen Specter’s Switch Is a Mixed Blessing to Progressives

Posted on April 28, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall specter

Not to be churlish about it, but news that Arlen Specter has switched parties to save himself from certain defeat in the 2010 Republican primary comes as a mixed blessing for peace and justice progressives.

Specter brings Senate Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, 60 votes, assuming Al Franken survives Norm Coleman’s prolonged court struggle in Minnesota.

On progressive issues, Specter’s record is not encouraging. Now 79 years old, he announced his late in life political conversion by reasserting his opposition to a major labor reform bill, the EFCA (Employees Free Choice Act).

The latest print edition of the ever-reliable Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (May, June, 2009) reports that Specter will bring to the Democratic Party his deep loyalty to Israel, for which he has been rewarded generously by Pro-Israel PAC contributors during his 29 years in the senate.

Two other senators, both Democrats, have received more career Pro-Israel funds than Specter’s $503,473. Michigan’s Carl Levin tops the list with $728, 737, followed by Iowa’s Tom Harkin with $552, 950. Specter is third in the career list, which was reported by WRMEA managing editor Janet McMahon,

In February 2005, Specter was diagnosed with an advanced form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer, for which he has had two periods of chemotherapy treatments, first in 2005, and and most recently, 2008. He courageously continued work in the senate throughout the treatments which left him with a temporary baldness that he proudly displayed in public, much to the encouragement of other cancer patients.

Specter’s announced opponent for the Republican nomination would have been former Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey, who narrowly lost to Specter in the 2004 Republican primary. A recent poll showed Toomey with a substantial lead for the 2010 nomination. His extreme conservatism virtually guarantees he will lose the 2010 general election.

As the Democratic nominee, Specter would easily defeat Toomey in the general election. There is no guarantee he will get the Democratic nomination. Pennsylvania is a labor-oriented state. If Specter insists on opposing EFCA he could face a labor-backed opponent in the Democratic primary.

(Chris Bowers writes on Openleft.com that Arlen Specter does have an announced primary challenger. His name is Joe Torsella, CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia,who says he will still run, even though Specter has switched parties.

Torsella has already passed one major political rite of passage. He has engaged in a comedic duel with Steve Colbert at the Constitutional Center, from which he emerged with his dignity.)

A progressive website, ProgressivePunch.org, which ranks all members of Congress on specific issues, gives Specter a middle to lower voting record on progressive issues. Such rankings tend to reflect the political philosophy of the organization doing the ranking, but it is still instructive to compare Specter’s career ranking, for example, to that of Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the Senate. Some specifics:

On Human Rights and Civil Liberties, Specter receives a 30% rating; Kennedy, 98%.

On Fair Taxation, Specter 5.5%; Kennedy, 99%.

On Labor Rights, Specter (before the EFCA vote) 45%, Kennedy,95%.

On the plus side, Specter should be a valuable veto-proof vote for judicial appointments, unblocking the holds Republicans have placed on President Obama’s appointees, budget bills (Specter’s support for the Stimulus Bill greatly angered his fellow Republicans), health care, education and energy programs. (One activist in the health care field assures me that Specter was a health care advocate long before he was struck by cancer.)

Specter’s departure has further isolated moderates in his former party, two of whom, Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina, and Olympia Snowe, of Maine, blamed his defection on the extreme right in the Republican party. Politico.com has their story.

If Specter gets another six years in the Senate, where he will no longer have to look over his shoulder at right wing primary opponents, he could emerge as a senator open to change. He could, that is, follow the example of our newly-minted Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who was recently lauded by New York columnist Roger Cohen for what he calls her “Mideast Pirouette”.

Cohen opens his column with the reminder that

Israel’s interests are not served by an uncritical American administration. The Jewish state emerged less secure and less loved from Washington’s post-9/11 Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.

Criticism of the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come from what Cohen terms “an unlikely source: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” who has transitioned “with aplomb from the calculation of her interests that she made as a senator from New York to a cool assessment of U.S. interests.”

Cohen continues:

I hear that Clinton was shocked by what she saw on her visit last month to the West Bank. This is not surprising. The transition from Israel’s first-world hustle-bustle to the donkeys, carts and idle people beyond the separation wall is brutal. If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering.

In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down. The buzz of business gives way to the clunking of hammers.

The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.

Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.

Cohen, who has produced consistently critical columns on Israel’s Occupation of late, writes in a gentle tone but his own personal anguish is clear. The Comments the Times prints are also worthy of careful study.

Cohen’s description of the West Bank sounds more like Gaza, with its abundance of donkeys and carts, than it does the urban centers of the West Bank where most of the Palestinian population lives surrounded by oppressive walls. But Cohen is entitled to a bit of poetic license; what matters is that he tells us what Secretary Clinton witnessed, and how she reacted.

This is the woman who as a senator and future presidential candidate praised the Wall as beneficial to both Palestinians and Israelis. We can certainly forgive her for that remark now that she has crossed the wall into the West Bank and experienced the reality with her own eyes.

If Hillary Clinton and President Obama are standing up to Netanyahu’s right wing government despite the hostility of our AIPAC-controlled Congress, it would appear, as Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, told Roger Cohen, that: “Initiatives are underway that show the United States is going to have some major differences with Israel.”

Reality has changed Hilary Clinton. Perhaps that is because, as Cohen puts it, “If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering.”

Change is also possible for Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, now that he has entered the Democratic majority, where he will find more progressive-leaning colleagues than he ever could have found in the Republican party.

Whatever his motives for switching parties, Specter should be greeted with gratitude and a touch of Obama Hope. Politicians are never perfect. But some of them can actually be redeemed.

Posted in Politics and Elections | 1 Comment

U.S. Justice Department May Drop Spy Case Against AIPAC Lobbyists

Posted on April 26, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

Pro-Israeli Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-Ca) may not be in so much trouble after all. The U.S. Justice Department may drop the spy case against former AIPAC Lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Harman might have figured in the case, had it gone to trial, as scheduled on June 2, The case, however, has been postponed repeatedly. It could open on June 2, but all signs point to Justice dropping it. This is good news for Harman, who was caught in an FBI wire tap of her conversation with an Israeli “agent”.

On the wire tap, Harman is reported to have promised the agent she would “wade into” the case on behalf of Rosen and Weissman.

Three days after her comments were revealed by Congressional Quarterly (April 19), the Washington Post (April 22) brought her the welcome news:

The U.S. government may abandon espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, officials said yesterday, as a prominent House lawmaker [Harman] denied new allegations that she offered to use her influence in their behalf.

The Post wrote that Congresswoman Harman expressed outrage at what she described as an “abuse of power” by the government, which had caught her in a wire tap in 2006 while the FBI was operating under a FISA (federally approved) operation to wire tap the agent who was on the phone with Harman.

Harman’s involvement in the spy case had been revealed in 2006, but the actual transcript of her conversation had not surfaced until last week.

On the wire tap Harman promised to use her influence to persuade the government to be more lenient with the two former lobbyists, both of whom were fired by AIPAC after the lobby group was told of recordings and video in which the lobbyists were seen and heard discussing classified information with Israeli officials and Pentagon Iran specialist Lawrence Franklin.

Franklin is the neoconservative who worked for fellow neocon and Bush appointee Doug Feith in the Pentagon, one of many neoconservatives with considerable influence in the Bush administration. Franklin pled guilty in 2005 to “charges related to unauthorized disclosure of national-security information to people not authorized to receive it”, i.e. Israeli officials.

In return for her assistance on the pending case against Rosen and Weissman, Harman understood that the agent would approach Haim Saban, a wealthy pro-Israel fund raiser, and ask him to put pressure on the (future) House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to grant Harman a waiver to serve on a term-limited House Intelligence Committee.

Had Pelosi agreed, Harman, as the ranking committee Democrat, would have become chair of the committee. The exchange heard on the wire tap could be read as a double “pay for play”. If Pelosi wants her campaign funding to continue, she will want to grant Harman her extended time on the Intel Committee. Harman, a Blue Dog Democratic leader, would nudge the Bush Justice Department to go easy on the AIPACC lobbyists.

Adopting the evasive and polite media language the MSM employs when dealing in anything to do with Israel, the Washington Post story politely reminds the reader of the obvious: Pelosi and her party are dependent on Zionist funding sources:

Harman has repeatedly described herself as a friend of AIPAC, and the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics says that she has received $347,688 in campaign contributions since 1989 from groups that take a pro-Israel stance. She is slated to appear on a panel to discuss “an insider’s look at the Middle East” at AIPAC’s May 3 policy conference.

A Pelosi aide told the Post that the Speaker did not give Harman the chairmanship “for ideological reasons.” One of those reasons: Harman’s decision not to oppose the war in Iraq. Pelosi denied that any pro-Israel donors had threatened to withhold donations.

She added, “”Everybody knows that I don’t respond to threats so it wouldn’t be useful to use them, but it isn’t true, no.”

The trial of Rosen and Weissman has been delayed for more than two years. The Post, helpfully (for the defense) reported that the government’s 2005 case against the two former lobbyists “was brought under a World War I-era espionage law”, using the defense’s possible argument that the law is out of date.

The Post reports that

The Justice Department decided not to proceed with a criminal case against Harman [in 2006] or to notify congressional leaders of the preliminary investigation because the evidence was at best murky and such cases are hard to prove, one former government official said yesterday.

Now, a new Justice Department is revisiting the case, possibly prompted by recent court rulings that “could make it harder for the government to win such convictions”. The sources for that speculation? Some law enforcement sources, and more importantly, “lawyers close to the case”.

The court decisions that have caused the government to consider dropping the case included

an appeals court ruling that allowed the defense to use classified information at trial. A lower-court judge also said prosecutors must show that the two men knew that the information they allegedly disclosed would harm the United States or aid a foreign government and that they knew what they were doing was illegal.

In lay terms this suggests two things: the desire to avoid letting classified information be revealed in a trial, and the belief that since Israel is a friendly country it would be difficult to prove that the information would prove to be harmful to the U.S. That is, at best, a shaky premise, but Justice may be looking for any premise in a storm at this point.

What lies ahead for the diplomats of the U.S. and Israel? Consider what happened to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a recent trip she made to Jerusalem.

The Secretary went to a meeting with the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Laura Rozen, who writes The Cable blog for the website, The New ForeignPolicy.com, learned from her sources that, well, let Rozen tell it:

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Netanyahu at the King David Hotel earlier this month, such was the concern that a certain former Mossad analyst who now serves as Netanyahu’s security advisor may pose a counterintelligence problem that, after conferring with an aide, Clinton suggested to Netanyahu that they reduce the number of people in the room.

The reason for Clinton’s unease was an Israeli official named Uzi Arad, (pictured here) who has been unable to secure a visa to visit the U.S. for the past two years. Arad says he assumes the reason is his alleged connection to the Franklin indictment.

Arad was not named in the indictment, but he was one of the Israeli security officials who met with Franklin when Franklin turned over U.S. secrets to Israel. The indictment against Franklin reads, in part:

On or about February 20, 2004, Franklin met in the cafeteria at the Pentagon with this person previously associated with an intelligence agency of Foreign Nation A and discussed a Middle Eastern country’s nuclear program. Foreign Nation A has previously been confirmed to be Israel, and the Middle Eastern country in question is Iran.

The “person” was Uzi Arad, who recently acknowledged to the Associated Press that he and Franklin had talked about “ordinary matters”.

Franklin was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison. He has not begun serving his time. He is expected to testify in the AIPAC lobbyists case, if it goes to trial.

After his talk with Franklin in the Pentagon cafeteria, Arad was transfered back to Israel. For the past two years, he served as director of intelligence for Israel’s Mossad, his country’s equivalent to the CIA. When Netanyahu became prime minister he chose Arad as director of Israel’s National Security Council.

Like Netanyahu, his new boss, Arad was opposed to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. As recently as last month he said he was against any territorial compromise with Palestinians.

Stephen Greene writes that Arad told a television interviewer: “We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of Palestinian populations, not the territories.”

Greene also points out that

Under a long-standing section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (NA), foreign individuals suspected of engaging in espionage or sabotage against the U.S. cannot be granted a visa to come here.

When Secretary Clinton met recently with Prime Minister Netanyahu, she was aware of Arad’s exposure as a foreign agent in the Franklin case. She diplomatically suggested that the meeting have fewer participants, giving Netenyahu an excuse to let Arad leave the meeting.

Instead the prime minister dismissed Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Sallai Meridor, leaving Arad, Israel’s new Security Chief, in the room. Meridor has since resigned his position as ambassador.

A few days later, Ha’aretz, a Jerusalem newspaper, said that Arad had been informed by U.S. administration officials that he would get his visa to enter the U.S. He is expected to accompany Prime Minister Netanyahu when he travels to Washington in early May.

Meanwhile, what about Congresswoman Jane Harman’s conversation, now on FBI tapes, with an Israeli agent, whose name has thus far not been revealed? Several internet sources, including Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo, Daily Kos diarist Mark Levey, and Tikum Olam’s Richard Silverstein, all speculate that Jane Harman’s “mystery” Israeli Agent is Naor Gilon, (pictured here) an Israeli staffer assigned to the Washington Israeli embassy in 2004.

The FBI had been tracking Gilon for several years. Silverstein discusses the bloggers tracking Gilon:

Raimondo notes that the reason the feds caught Rosen, Weissman and Franklin in flagrante was that they’d been surveilling Gilon, who was suspected of running an east coast spying ring on Israel’s behalf. Several months after the arrest of the Aipac Two, Gilon left this country rather hastily (though Israel claims his normal tour of rotation was up).

Gilon had been in the U.S. government’s sights because of his suspected spy activities, according to Juan Coles’ Informed Comment posting on December 12, 2004:

It was the spy rings that led the FBI to put Naor Gilon, the chief of political affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington, under videotape surveillance. They were “floored” when Larry Franklin walked in and sat down and began offering Gilon a confidential document. Franklin was one of two Iran desk officers for the Near East and South Asia bureau at the Pentagon.

Ron Kampeas reported in JTA, “The Global News Service of the Jewish People”, April 17 that, far from being in any sort of diplomatic penalty box because of his role in the Lawrence Franklin case, Naor has risen even further in the Israeli security ranks:

Avigdor Lieberman . . . the foreign minister in the new Benjamin Netanyahu government, has asked Naor Gilon to take the top career slot at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, JTA has learned, effectively making Gilon his right hand man.

Gilon must clear a Foreign Ministry admissions committee before the announcement is formal, a process that has been delayed by the Passover holiday.

Gilon, then the political officer at Israel’s Washington embassy, allegedly met multiple times between 2002 and 2005 with Lawrence Franklin, a mid-level Iran analyst at the Pentagon who has since pleaded guilty in the case. The men allegedly discussed Iran’s nuclear program and its disruptive role in Iraq.

So Jane Harman can rest easy. If Naor Gilon was in fact her “mystery” Israeli agent, there appears to be no lasting damage to Harman for chatting with him about pro-Israeli funders putting pressure on Speaker Pelosi.

A much larger diplomatic battle between the U.S. and Israel awaits both nations. Jane Harman will be needed as a reliable soldier in the Rahm Emanuel’s congressional trenches.

President Obama is determined to forge a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine before the end of his first term. The new Netanyahu Israeli government has no intention of allowing the two state solution.

Obama knows what he faces, an experienced, and well-informed, Israeli team of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, assisted by Uzi Arad, and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, backed by Naor Gilon. Arad and Gilon have been around in Washington long enough to know all the good restaurants. Uzi Arad has even spent some quality time in the Pentagon cafeteria. A fellow could pick up all sorts of helpful information in a place like that.

Netanyahu’s personal U.S. background is even more impressive.

Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington from 1982-1984; and Israel’s United Nations ambassador from 1984 to 1988. Moved with his family to the US when he was 14, lived and graduated from high school in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. After a required stint in the Israeli Defense Force, Bibi returned to the US for BS degree in architecture from MIT in 1975, an MS degree from MIT in management in 1977.

And there is more: Bibi studied political science at both Harvard and MIT. Before returning to Israel, Netanyahu worked for a consulting firm in Boston. Lets face it: Israel has a prime minister who knows which state Cheltenham is in.

This is a man who has spent his life preparing to engage the United States in diplomatic warfare. No wonder he brushed aside Hillary Clinton’s attempt to exclude his man Uzi Arad from that Jerusalem meeting.

Now Bibi is ready for the main event: Toe to toe with Barack Obama, the new undisputed world champion.

Posted in Middle East, Middle East Politics | 3 Comments

Jane Harman Caught on NSA Wiretap Cutting a Deal with an Israeli “Agent”

Posted on April 21, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall

Representative Jane Harman (D-California) is in a tough spot. She has been caught on an NSA wiretap cutting a deal with an Israeli agent.

Will Representative Harman become the Rod Blagojevich of Washington, accused of “pay for play”? Don’t count on it. Harman has many friends inside the Israel Lobby. And the Lobby knows people who know people.

Nonetheless, a story has just been published that reports that Harman was wiretapped in a conversation in which she promised to help AIPAC in an Israel Lobby staff problem. In return, so the story reports, she expects help from AIPAC.

The story identifies the wiretap conversation as one between Harman and someone involved in “alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.”

The conversation between Harman and the agent involved two AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who had been indicted and were–and still are– awaiting trial for passing U.S. secrets to Israeli agents. After their indictment, the two men were fired by AIPAC. But according to the wiretap, AIPAC still wanted to help its former employees.

It was Steve Rosen, by the way, who recently led the assault by pro-Israel politicians and bloggers against the appointment of Charles Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the high-level interagency group that prepares evaluations for the president and other senior officials.

After enduring the Rosen-led assault for three weeks, Freeman withdrew his name from consideration.

Maintaining influence with the U.S. intelligence community is important to the Israel Lobby. That importance was in play in the conversation the NSA wiretap picked up between Harman and the unidentified Israeli agent.

The wiretaps revealed what may could been a deal in the making. AIPAC promised Harman it would lobby Nancy Pelosi to let Harman hold on to her position as a member of the House Committee on Intelligence. In return, Harman would use her influence to have the Bush Justice Department reduce the charges against the two indicted AIPAC staffers to lesser felonies.

Jeff Stein, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly Politics, broke the wiretap story on April 19. It is not a new story. What is new is that the story is now out in the open, thanks to Stein and his sources.

The wiretap story had been known within the intelligence community and the Justice Department since 2005. Until now, the story had been withheld from the public. Stein begins his story:

Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC], the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

Apparently becoming aware of the implications of the conversation, Harman hung up. The wiretap recorded her final comment, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

After Stein’s CQ piece appeared, the New York Times followed with its story, confirming Harman’s conversation from its sources. The Times also confirmed that Harman’s caller

. . . promised her that a wealthy California donor — the media mogul Haim Saban — would threaten to withhold campaign contributions to Representative Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was expected to become House speaker after the 2006 election, if she did not select Ms. Harman for the intelligence post.

These wiretaps were not aimed at Harman but at the “Israeli agent” with whom she was talking. The conversation took place on George Bush’s watch before the 2006 Congressional elections at a time when the Democrats were heavily favored to take control of the House. The actual date of the call has not been revealed.

Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader, was expected to become Speaker after the Democratic victory. Harman and her caller were assuming this victory which is why Harman counted on the caller to make sure Pelosi would allow her to remain on the Intelligence Committee.

Harman was heard to say on the NSA wiretap that she was prepared to “waddle into” the AIPAC legal problem, if “you think it will make a difference.”

Pelosi did became Speaker, but she refused to provide Harman with the waiver she needed to continue as a member of the Intelligence Committee, a select committee where membership is term limited. Harman is no longer on the Committee.

After allegations emerged from the wiretaps that pro-Israel lobbyists promised to help Harman by raising money for Pelosi, the FBI launched an investigation of Harman. The investigation was eventually dropped, supposedly for “lack of evidence.”

The probe did not end because of a “lack of evidence”. According to Stein

Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then his attorney general, called off the Harman probe, because. according to three top former national security officials, “Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the [Bush] administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.”

Time magazine wrote in 2006 that:

A congressional source tells Time that the lobbying for Harman has included a phone call several months ago from entertainment industry billionaire and major Democratic party contributor Haim Saban. A Saban spokeswoman said he could not be reached for comment.

A phone call pushing for a particular member’s committee assignment might be unwelcome, but it would not normally be illegal on its own. And it is unclear whether Saban — who made much of his fortune with the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers children’s franchise — knew that lobbying Pelosi might be viewed by others as part of a larger alleged plan.

Saban has donated at least $3,000 to Harman’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records, and the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, which he sponsors at the prestigious Brookings Institution, boasts Harman among its biggest fans.

“When the Saban Center talks, I listen,” Harman said at a Saban Center briefing in February [2006] on U.S. strategy in Iraq.

Stein reports further:

Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,” a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.

And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.

First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation.

Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.

Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat.

. . . thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.

But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened.

Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program

He was right.

On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.” . . . .

Following the publication of Stein’s CQ Politics article, Jane Harman is angry. Talking Points Memo Muckraker has the story and a video of Harman’s interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell in which she defends herself by bragging about her close relationship with AIPAC.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) just appeared on MSNBC to give a guns blazing denial of the allegations in CQ‘s explosive report from yesterday.

The congresswoman, speaking to Andrea Mitchell, reiterated her claim that she didn’t intervene with anyone — not the Justice Department, or the White House — in the AIPAC case. And she renewed her call for DOJ to disclose all the material associated with the investigation into her that, according to CQ‘s report, Alberto Gonzales helped stymie.

“If there are tapes out there, bring it on!” she said, calling the government wiretapping that reportedly picked up her conversation, “a gross abuse of power.”

Harman said she had no need to make a quid pro quo with AIPAC. “I have a long friendship with AIPAC. I didn’t need to cut some deal with AIPAC.”

She said it was publicly known that she wanted the House Intel committee job, and added: “I believed that I had been promised that [job] in writing,” by Nancy Pelosi.

Now what? Will an influential California congresswoman with strong ties to AIPAC, face further legal trouble? The answer may depend on the identity of that “Israeli agent” Harman talks to on the NSA wiretap.

If, as the 2006 Time article hints, the “agent” is Haim Saban, the wealthy Israeli supporter, then Josh Marshall, writing in Talking Points Memo, on April 20, doubts that the government would have much of a case, since Saban is not a likely “agent” for Israel, just a strong Israeli loyalist. Marshall struggles to find an answer, updating his story as it unfolds, in traditional blog fashion:

Let me follow up on my earlier post which asked just who that “suspected Israeli agent” was who Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) was talking to. Some quick TPM staff research shows that the original Time article on this story from 2006 identified Harman’s interlocutor as Haim Saban.

(See my correction at the bottom of this post. It’s less clear than I originally thought that we know Saban was the person on the other end of the phone call. Time notes that Saban did lobby Pelosi on Harman’s behalf and seems to suggest this as a possible part of the quid pro quo. But a closer look leaves the identity of Harman’s interlocutor an open question.)

Saban is a major entertainment industry mogul, who’s a big contributor to the Democratic party and a major supporter of Israel. If you’re interested in some fun trivia, I think a big chunk of his fortune comes from creating the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. In any case, Saban was born in Alexandria, Egypt, was I believe raised in Israel and then became a naturalized US citizen.

The key here is that the premise of the investigation into AIPAC was precisely whether people around AIPAC were not just big boosters of Israel but in some sense acting as agents of a foreign power — obviously, an extremely explosive question. So the intel sources appear to be referring to him as a “suspected Israeli agent.”

There are obviously a lot of facts we don’t know here. But if Saban is the interlocutor, it seems to me that any legal case against Harman would likely be very shaky since the claim that Saban was an agent of a foreign power would quite likely be legally unsustainable.

Late Update: Ron Kampeas has more on this at the JTA blog.

Important Late Update: A closer look at the original Time article says that Saban was the one who lobbied Pelosi, but not necessarily that Saban was the “agent” in the conversation with Harman. However, Ron Kampeas’s update at JTA says that Saban was in fact the person on the call. . . . What’s not clear to me is whether Kampeas was doing more than drawing an inference from the Time reporting. So for the moment, let’s say that the identity of Harman’s interlocutor is an open question.

Finally, Philip Weiss, the Jewish blogger-journalist who runs Mondoweiss.com, says the unsayable about Jane Harman.

The front-page story in the Times yesterday on the Jane Harman allegations didn’t say that she’s Jewish. Neither does CQ, which broke the story. Chris Matthews didn’t say she’s Jewish in his report last night–though he’s always talking about the Irish Catholics–and neither did Robert Siegel on NPR. I bet Andrea Mitchell didn’t either.

Jane Harman’s Jewish. There, I just said it. That’s why we have the blogosphere. Any intelligent person discussing this story at dinner is going to mention that she’s Jewish. That’s because Alan Dershowitz said that supporting Israel is the “secular religion” of American Jews. And because Walt and Mearsheimer point out that Jewish-Americans play a prominent part in the Israel lobby. (To read Weiss’ entire posting, click here.)

Oh, and one other thing: AIPAC’s annual love fest will be celebrated May 3-5, in Washington, DC. Half the US Senate will be there.

And this just in, Jane Harman will attend. Her reception will be above the rock star level. Israel will be represented by Israel’s Air Force Commander. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu may be a no-show, which means no White House reception.

Which is the way we will have to leave it for now. Meanwhile, for those of us keeping score on Israel, Harman and AIPAC, “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Posted in Politics and Elections | 1 Comment

Wingnuts, Blinders and Bubbles: Obama Continues U.S. Obeisance to Israel

Posted on April 16, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall wingnut-small

The right wing media wingnuts (Urban Dictionary: “A wingnut: An outspoken, irrational person with deeply-held, nominally conservative, political views”) went wild over the slight bow they detected when President Obama greeted Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah with a cordial two-handed shake. It was an ignorant and silly objection.

But what word can the Urban Dictionary suggest to describe liberals, moderates, and progressives who cling to their own deeply-held, rigid political views? What word best describes the entire U.S. media corp and the U.S. Congress, for that matter, who continue to enable President Obama to pretend he does not know how tightly the state of Israel controls U.S. foreign policy.

You will not find any need for a wingnut equivalent in the MSM; wingnuts don’t know they are wingnuts. Instead, go to the internet to find the spotlight thrown on the enabling behavior of our leaders. And develop your own wingnut word equivalent.

Start with Kathleen and Bill Christison who have just published a scathing critique of the Obama administration’s continued obeisance to Israel. Now retired after a career that included work as CIA analysts, Kathleen and Bill have also co-authored a book on the Israeli occupation and its impact on Palestinians. The book is due out from Pluto Press in June. Watch for it.

Their essay is available at Counterpunch.com. It begins:

To a greater degree than perhaps ever before, Washington today is engulfed in denial about Israel and its stupefying behavior, about its murderous policies toward the Palestinians, about the efforts of Israel and its U.S. defenders to force us to ignore its atrocities.

Kathleen and Bill Christison explain:

Blinders have always been part of the attire of U.S. policy makers and politicians with regard to Israel and Israeli actions, but in the wake of the three-week Israeli assault that laid waste to the tiny territory of Gaza — an assault ended very conveniently just before Barack Obama was inaugurated, so that he has been able to act as though it never occurred — the perspective from which Washington operates is strikingly more blinkered than ever in the past.

Change we can believe in moves briskly forward in Washington on many fronts, but not on any front that relates to Israel. President Barack Obama is a welcome relief from the right wing policies of George Bush, except where Israel is concerned.

We had hoped Obama would end Washington’s obeisance to Israel and the Israel Lobby. He has not. For this we can thank the blinders. We were given fair warning the blinders would remain in place when Hilary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Richard Holbrooke and more recently, Dennis Ross, joined the Obama administration of Change. We had hoped Obama would not let this happen. We were wrong.

Ross is now officially the guy to go to for Iranian policy management. He has experience in forcing Palestinian negotiators s to accept Israel’s demands for peace agreements. But what does Ross know about Iran? Does he speak Farsi? Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that his loyalty to Israel is well documented. Our saber rattling against Iran is inspired far more by Israeli pressure than by our own realistic needs.

Ross’ presence at Clinton’s State Department’s Iran desk reassures Israel that its desire to prevent Iran from becoming, as Israel already is, a nuclear powered state in the Middle East, will now be in loyal and capable hands.

Robert Dreyfuss wrote in The Nation:

When Dennis Ross, a hawkish, pro-Israel adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, was elevated in February to the post of special adviser on “the Gulf and Southwest Asia”–i.e., Iran–Ross’s critics hoped that his influence would be marginal. After all, unlike special envoys George Mitchell (Israel-Palestine) and Richard Holbrooke (Afghanistan-Pakistan), whose appointments were announced with fanfare, Ross’s appointment was long delayed and then announced quietly, at night, in a press release.

But diplomats and Middle East watchers hoping Ross would be sidelined are wrong. He is building an empire at the State Department: hiring staff and, with his legendary flair for bureaucratic wrangling, cementing liaisons with a wide range of US officials.

Ross is, according to Dreyfuss, “widely viewed as a cog in the machine of Israel’s Washington lobby.” In 1985 Ross helped start the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Israel lobby’s leading think tank. From 2001 until he resigned to accept an Obama appointment, Ross worked at WINEP, where, Dreyfuss writes:

[He] helped to oversee a series of reports designed to ring alarm bells about Iran’s nuclear research and to support closer US-Israeli ties in response. Last summer, while advising Obama, he co-chaired a task force that produced a paper titled “Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge.” . . . That report opted for an alarmist view of Iran’s nuclear program and proposed that the next president set up a formal US-Israeli mechanism for coordinating policy toward Iran (including any future need for “preventive military action”).

Is there any reason for Dennis Ross to be in charge of the Iranian portfolio other than to reassure Israel that all is well in Obamaland? Can he be relied upon to act as an “honest broker” in dealing with Iran, given Israel’s obsession with Iran? The answer is no. Dreyfuss writes:

Daniel Kurtzer, an Orthodox Jew who served as US ambassador to Israel and Egypt and who was one of Obama’s top Middle East advisers last year, co-wrote a book in which he explained, “The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.”

The Christisons’ wrote in their Counterpunch essay that Palestinians are very aware of Obama’s obeisance to Israel:

So far, three months into the Obama administration, there is little evidence that Obama sees clearly or is ready to speak frankly. Another very savvy Palestinian political commentator and activist, Haidar Eid, who lives and endures Israel’s constant punishments in Gaza, recently told an interviewer that the international reaction to Israel’s Gaza assault was like the reaction to some kind of natural disaster — as if no human hand had had a role in the destruction and nothing but money and aid was required to resolve the problem. As if, he said, the disaster had not been “created by the state of Israel to annihilate the Palestinian resistance and Palestinian society.”

Eid was commenting on an international conference of donors that convened in Sharm el-Sheikh in early March and made themselves feel magnanimous by pledging almost $5 billion in aid to relieve the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza — but not to do anything to resolve the political reality of Israeli occupation that is at the root of Gaza’s humanitarian plight.

Speaking at a symposium in Washington, sponsored by the Middle East Policy Council just before Obama took office, Ali Abunimah, a leading Palestinian-American commentator who runs the website ElectronicIntifada.net, said that Washington exists in “a bubble of ignorance” and denial. In the symposium Abunimah expressed his strong conviction that the two-state solution in the region is dead. The Christison essay describes Abunimah’s analysis:

While the rest of the world, particularly at the level of civil society, is talking about war crimes tribunals for Israeli leaders and about sanctions against Israel, Abunimah observed, Washington and those world leaders beholden to it are trying to move ahead as if nothing had changed. “We have to expect,” he said, “that the official apparatus of the peace-process industry — the Hillary Clintons, the Quartets, the Tony Blairs, the Javier Solanas, the Ban Ki-Moons, the whole panoply of official and semi-official Washington think tanks — will carry on with business as usual, trying to make believe that, through their ministrations, a Palestinian state will come into being.” But in the real world, this state won’t happen, he said, and the time has come to speak frankly about what is going on.

Roger Cohen, New York Times columnist, is a MSM member who has escaped both the blinders and the bubble. His recent columns on Israel’s assault on Gaza has drawn outraged criticism from the Lobby. In one recent column, “Israel Cries Wolf”, Cohen traces Israel’s history of peddling fear about Iran and nuclear weapons. Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres predicted in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

Ehud Barak, now defense minister, warned in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran. . . .I don’t buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is “a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest.” Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.”

For Israel’s leaders there is always a “wide-eyed believer” running Iran plotting to build a bomb to destroy Israel. To better understand the history of these wide-eyed believers and Israel’s paranoia over nuclear arms,, Cohen advises President Obama to read Trita Parsi’s Treacherous Alliance in preparation. As his sub title, “The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States”, suggests, Parsi’s 2007 book examines the long history of the”triangular relationship” between the United States, Israel and Iran. It is also a study of the use of rhetoric to cover secrecy and a hidden history which the U.S. and Israel prefer to keep secret.

No doubt the Lobby has read it, which is why it does not want Parsi’s history of the alliance penetrating the bubble in which the Lobby maintains its control over the MSM. Cohen is a highly respected journalist. His recommendation of Parsi’s book could reach the president, and just maybe, it will reach a few of his colleagues in the MSM.

Posted in Middle East Politics, Politics and Elections | 1 Comment

Yes to Tutu, Cuba Travel, and Marriage in Vermont

Posted on April 13, 2009 by wallwritings

By James M. Wall

The times they are a’changing. Not immediately and not fast enough, but the signs are promising. Consider these three stories:

Michigan State President Says No to ADL

Michigan State University invited retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to deliver the university’s 2009 commencement address. Tutu is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid in his native South Africa in the 1980s. He is a widely admired Christian world leader.

Two Anti-Defamation League officials, including the Jewish advocacy group’s director, Alexander H. Foxman, sent a letter of protest to MSU President Lou Anna Simon, objecting to the presence of Tutu at MSU. The officials claimed that Tutu was a “poor choice” to deliver the commencement address because he had made statements about Israel that “conveyed outright bigotry against … the Jewish people.”

The ADL officials also charged that a proposed cultural and academic boycott of Israel, which Tutu supports, was “based on ideas that are anti-Semitic and should be anathema to any institution of higher learning truly committed to academic freedom.” They asked MSU to reconsider the invitation.

President Simon responded this week. She said no to the ADL. Archbishop Tutu’s invitation would stand. President Simon added:

Michigan State University rejects the notion that free intellectual exchange and scholarly activities should be casualties of political disagreement.

David Wiley, a professor of sociology who headed MSU’s African Studies Center for 30 years before stepping down this year, was involved in MSU’s 1978 decision to divest from South Africa. Wiley described the ADL’s request as “improper.” Wiley told the East Lansing Journal:

“Again and again, the ADL and some other Jewish agencies confuse being critical of Israel with being anti-Semitic,” he said. “In fact, Bishop Tutu has always been for inclusion of the marginal, whether it’s blacks in South Africa or the Jewish community.” Tutu has said he supports the existence of the state of Israel. He also has compared the treatment of Palestinians to that of blacks under apartheid.

A similar campaign against a Tutu campus appearance at Minnesota’s St. Thomas’ University in 2007 was more effective. But St. Thomas paid a high price for canceling its invitation to Tutu. Father Dennis Dease, president of the University of St. Thomas, sent a letter to his campus community following a national outcry against his decision. Father Dease wrote:

One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds. Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas.

I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.

The ADL’s effort to intimidate Michigan State University’s President Simon fizzled.

St. Thomas’ President Dease courageously admitted he had made a mistake in withdrawing his school’s invitation to Tutu. The signs of hope are all around us.

President Obama Opens the Door to More Travel to Cuba

Late Monday afternoon, President Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, announced that American citizens will be free to make unlimited transfers of money and visit relatives in Cuba. Gibbs, was joined in the announcement by Dan Restrepo, the president’s National Security aide on Latin American policy.

The joint announcement was seen as a step to usher in a new era of openness toward Cuba. There was no move to lift the boycott against the island, but the Obama decision is a major shift away from previous administration policies since the Carter Administration. Carter was the last U.S. president to signal that he wanted to actually improve relations with Cuba.

Wayne Smith, a Carter appointee, was chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana from 1979-1982. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington. Smith wrote in the Washington Post that he had thought the White House would announce “it was not only lifting restrictions on the travel of Cuban Americans, but also that of U.S. academics, cultural groups and other visitor categories.”

This more sweeping move was not included in the new policy, which to Smith “was very disappointing”. This suggests that an internal White House debate over the policy chose the more conservative option, rather than the hoped-for total rejection of previous policies. Smith added:

If this is all the Obama administration has to offer by way of change in our Cuba policy, the president is in for a difficult time at the upcoming Summit of the Americas. Our Cuba policy has zero support internationally, and Latin American states have indicated they expect some real change on our part. Let’s hope that President Obama reconsiders between now and the summit opening.

Monday’s announcement was timed to coincide with Obama’s trip this week to Trinidad and Tobago where he will meet with Latin American and Caribbean leaders. It is still possible for Obama to use the Summit meeting to take his policy change even further when he meets with leaders who will be demanding a stronger move toward openness to Cuba.

Those members of Congress who are strongly anti-Castro, are under the influence of the Cuban American lobby, which provides votes (especially in Florida) and money for the continuation of the ineffective and outmoded U.S. policy on Cuba. Other members of Congress, including Republican Senator Richard Lugar, have been pushing for a more lenient policy which would favor more trade and completed freedom for all Americans to travel to Cuba, not just Cuban Americans. About 1.5 million Americans have relatives living in Cuba.

Obama is retaining the 47 year old U.S. trade embargo, offering the usual rationale that the boycott is needed to encourage Cuba to free political prisoners on the island. Since the boycott has had no impact on the Castro brothers’ governments, Obama’s retention of the boycott is purely a sop to conservatives in Congress. Obama has made a cautious step, but he promised much more in his campaign rhetoric.

In a speech he gave in Miami during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama promised to change U.S. policy toward Cuba. He was critical of politicans who “come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba.”

Wayne Smith is right; Obama has made a tentative step, but he needs to go much further, sooner, rather than later.

Vermont Joins the Move to Legalize Same Sex Marriages

On April 7, Vermont became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage when the Vermont Legislature voted to override a veto by Gov. Jim Douglas which allows gays and lesbians to marry. The Burlington Free Press reported that the vote in the state Senate was 23-5 to override the veto and 100-49 to override in the House. Under Vermont law, two-thirds of each chamber had to vote for override.

Vermont is now the fourth state to permit same-sex marriage and the first state to approve same sex marriage through the legislative process. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Iowa are the other three states now allowing same sex marriage, thanks to decrees handed down from state courts.

For a brief period, California had approved same sex marriage, but voters supporting Proposition 8 on the November, 2008 ballot, overturned that law. At the moment, there is an intense political battle in California to overturn Proposition 8.

Meanwhile, our Canadian neighbors to the north have a federal law allowing same sex marriage. A blogger writing for Salon.com, sums up why she feels the law is a good one. Her recent blog begins:

As I’ve stated in previous blogs, I am Canadian. In Canada it is a federal law that people of the same sex can be married. Society has not come crashing down around our ears, heterosexual marriage has not suffered any degradation, and now that it is law, very few people give a damn. I suspect the same would be true if the US passed the same law. Gay men and women would no longer be further marginalized but become an even more integral part of society rather than standing in the wings waiting for equal rights. It is not a light issue – it is a huge step towards ensuring that gay people are SEEN.

So there we have it: The times they are indeed, changing. Archbishop Tutu is free to speak, Cuban-Americans are free to travel back to their homeland, and the GLBT community is slowly starting to be seen. In a democracy, change is usually slow. But sometimes, maybe when the stars are aligned in just the proper order, change could rush in upon us, and we will all be free.

Posted in Religion and politics, Religious Faith, The Human Condition | 4 Comments

Could Avraham Burg Be Israel’s Future Barack Obama?

Posted on April 10, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall burgweb

Avraham Burg is the former Speaker of the Israeli Parliament and former Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization. Winding up a recent book tour in the United States, Burg was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

Burg was in the U.S. to discuss his new book, The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes.

In the 2008 English foreword to his book, which was initially published in Hebrew in 2007, Burg wrote:

I wrote this book in order to open up the heart, mouth, and eyes for a new vision. I have tried to touch on our [Israel’s] maladies and afflictions and to offer preliminary directions of cure and recovery on the road to a new national and global vision for the Jewish people. . . .

Now, the book has been published in other languages and I am once more ridden with anxiety. Can a foreigner understand Israeli intimacy? Is it possible for someone who is not part of the Jewish family to perceive the loving tension that characterizes family members who sometimes do not see eye to eye with one another and yet remain whole? Will there be people who take my words, distort them and use them as weapons against me, against my nation? Probably.

In an answer to a question from Goodman, when he appeared on Democracy Now, Burg spoke of his earlier years:

I was for many years a kind of a strange bird. I was born to a father who was the leader of the National Religious Party. And he was, for many, many years, a member of each and every cabinet of Israel, from ’48 to ’88—that’s the year I was elected to the Knesset and he retired. And actually, I knew something about Israeli politics, but my position was different than my father’s. It was always more humanistic and less introverted. It was always more universalistic and less nationalistic, etc., etc. I was the founder—one of the founders of the protest movement against the war on Lebanon in ’82, and then I walked into public arena and became whatever I became, a young promising promise.

In his transformation from a promising politician from a leading Israeli political family–his father escaped from Berlin in 1939–Burg became a pariah to many of his fellow Israelis. The thesis of his book is that the post-1967 Israel is not working. The primary reason: “the grip of the Holocaust over our life.”

“Never again” is central to the Jewish understanding of the Holocaust. But for Burg, “never again. . . cannot be the only sole prism through which we see the world.”

. . . whomever is the victim today needs the help of yesterday’s victim to prevent his or her own victimization, be it a battered woman, be it Darfuri, be it somebody in the inner city of Detroit, be it whoever it is. Victims are all over the place. And the Holocaust is not mine only to say, “I have a monopoly over suffering, and that’s it.” Oh, no.

The contrast between treatments of Burg’s book that appeared in the New York Times and the London Independent expose the dangerous chasm between the U.S. mindset and that of the rest of the world. Dangerous because the U.S. government sponsors Israel’s continued use of the Holocaust to justify its treatment of the Palestinian people.

Read the two articles here and here and make your own comparisions. Here, meanwhile, are samples:

Donald McIntyre wrote in the London Independent:

The implication of Burg’s analysis, one that perhaps only an Israeli would have dared promote, is that the fostered memory of the Holocaust hovers destructively over every aspect of Israeli political life – including its relations with the Palestinians since the 1967 Six Day War and the subsequent occupation. “We have pulled the Shoah out of its historical context,” he writes, “and turned it into a plea and generator for every deed. All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah and therefore all is allowed – be it fences , sieges … curfews, food and water deprivation or unexplained killings. All is permitted because we have been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to behave.”

There is none of this candor in the analysis from Ethan Bronner, the New York Times Middle East correspondent. Instead, Bronner adopts the pro-Israel line by, among other things, misconstruing Burg’s own description in the English-language foreword to this book of the different titles he had in mind for his book.

Mr. Burg has shifted the title of his book over the years. When he was writing it, he called it “Hitler Won.” When he published it in Hebrew he called it “Defeating Hitler.”

Partly, he said in the interview, his thinking is evolving, and partly his American editors made some smart cuts and suggestions. But it also seems clear that he has modified and adjusted his arguments, especially for a foreign audience. The English version does not have some of his more alarming assertions in the Hebrew one — for example, that the Israeli government would probably soon pass the equivalent of the Nuremberg laws, with provisions like a prohibition on marriage between Jews and Arabs.

Book titles change during the process of creating a book. And different audiences require different titles. That is called marketing, Mr. Bronner. But how is the threat of marriage laws in Israel an “alarming assertion”?

Such laws are already in practice in Israel in devious ways that discriminate against non-Jewish residents of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza who are married, or want to marry, Arab Israeli citizens who live inside of Israel.

Could Avraham Burg become Israel’s future Barack Obama? I think he could, and here’s why:

Burg has deep roots within Israel and an equally deep dedication to the Jewish people. He is a frequent speaker today in Israel. Most of his speeches are delivered before young audiences. The old guard, the generation that elected Israel’s current right wing government, is, as Burg argues in his book, grounded in its need for the Holocaust to justify what Israel does in its role as an occupying military power.

Young people who love Israel and embrace their Jewishness are a potential voting bloc who could embrace Burg in much the same way younger American voters embraced Barack Obama.

Donald Macintyre concluded his Independent article:

What has most encouraged [Burg] about the book’s reception is its impact on younger Israelis, groups of whom he is still invited to address 18 months after its publication. “All those who wanted to kill me are Labour centrists, 50-plus, secular, well-off economically, and they said, ‘Well Avraham now that we’ve made it, you come with your stupid questions. Stop it immediately.’ I lost many of my classical supporters in the centre. On the other hand I gained very interesting new ground among the younger generation who understand that something is not working in this kingdom.”

So would the politician-turned-prophet, who was once the great Prime Ministerial hope of the Israeli left, turn back to politician again? Burg, who at 53 is currently a partner in running a labour-intensive agriculture business, acknowledges there is pressure – “I won’t say a lot, but some” – to do so. He is, he says, no longer “obsessed” by the idea as he once was. But “if the situation happens, maybe I’ll say yes.” What’s more important, he insists, is that “if people today ask me, Avrum, why don’t you come back to politics, for me it’s a huge, encouraging statement that the day will come when my views might be represented in the Knesset, that someone who was only a year ago the national pariah is perceived as an alternative to so many problems here. That’s amazing.”

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA anti-terror expert, was a debate partner with Avraham Burg at Georgetown University last month. The Doha Debate was under the auspices of the Qatar-Based Doha Foundation. Scheuer and Burg took the affirmative side in addressing the Oxford Union-style question: “This house believes that it is time for the U.S. administration to get tough with Israel.”

Arguing on the negative side were Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz and former Israeli foreign ministry adviser Dore Gold. The audience at Georgetown voted at the conclusion, 67-33, in favor of the affirmative argument given by Burg and Scheuer.

Scheuer later gave his impression of the experience for Anti-War.com. He gave this evaluation of his partner’s performance:

The most impressive of the debaters was Mr. Burg. The former Knesset speaker and current peace activist is an eloquent and to-the-point speaker who successfully used humor to puncture the sanctimony of several of the “no” team’s well-worn bromides. For his part, Mr. Burg clearly and concisely argued that the best chance for an equitable two-state solution was for the U.S. government to take a strong, almost parental hand to cajole and, if necessary, coerce both Israelis and Palestinians to reach an equitable agreement.

I found Mr. Burg’s position logical, thoroughly informed, and poignant, but ultimately unconvincing. If the U.S. government had a policy on the Israel-Palestine issue that was based on protecting genuine U.S. national interests, it just might be able to play the role Mr. Burg suggested. But Washington does not have such a position; under leaders of both parties the U.S. position is that of the Likud, and they are held to mark by the anti-American Israel-Firsters in the media, the Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and AIPAC. Ultimately, Mr. Burg’s campaign for an equitable two-state solution will be defeated by pro-Israel U.S.-citizens, who are also likely to be the agents of Israel’s demise.

“An eloquent and to-the-point speaker who successfully used humor to puncture the sanctimony of several of the “no” team’s well-worn bromides”? As a debater Burg was “logical, thoroughly informed and poignant”, filled with the idealism of a pre-election Obama.

Sounds a lot like the younger Barack Obama. Burg, like Obama, is an optimist. He is also an experienced politician, and it is certainly possible that at some point in the future, he could apply that optimism and political acumen to rescue Israel from itself. With help, of course, from an optimistic American leader like Barack Hussein Obama.

In his book, Burg concludes his chapter on “Remembering the Weimar Republic”: “I cannot end such a sad chapter without thinking of something optimistic. I reflect on the question in Psalms: ‘Where from will come my helper?'” Sounds like a translation of the 121st Psalm to me: “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills. From whence does my help come?”

Posted in Middle East Politics | 2 Comments

Jewels in the American Crown: Obama, Hightower and Maddow

Posted on April 5, 2009 by wallwritings

by James M. Wall wall-e3

Elections do have consequences. Imagine any other current American politician handling questions from the international press corp and town hall meetings the way Barack Obama has been doing on his European trip.

We have much for which to be thankful this spring, starting with the fact that our democracy awoke from its stupor in time to invite Barack (and never forget, Michelle) into our White House for four and hopefully, eight years.

Obama has elevated our national sense of purpose. He has inspired us to look on the brighter side of life. Sometimes we even feel like Wall-E poking through mountains of trash and coming up with a jewel.

Rachel Maddow is another cause for thanksgiving. She invited Colin Powell to a one on one interview and politely but firmly asked him about his possible involvement in approving torture. Here are Rachel and Powell in this clip from The Rachel Maddow show. Watch it and concentrate on Rachel. She is still the brightest media jewel around, intelligent, fearless and unrelenting in her questions to the former Secretary of State about his part in the Bush-Cheney dark age era.

Rachel asks Powell about high level meetings he attended where torture was pondered and approved. Sadly, Powell indicts himself, deflecting Rachel’s questions with his “wait until we read the entire transcript” routine. Oh, Colin, we had expected so much more from you. From the look of disappointment on Rachel’s face, so had she.

When Rachel turned her attention to North Carolina’s Republican Senator Richard Burr, she did not look disappointed. She looked downright gleeful in her sarcasm as she nailed the hapless Burr for “delaying” the nomination of Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth to a top position in U.S. Veterans’ Affairs Department. Duckworth is an Iraqi war veteran who lost both legs and the use of one arm in a helicopter crash in Iraq.

Duckworth came home to Illinois, narrowly lost a race for Congress, and has since served as director of Veterans’ Affairs in Illinois. She is a well qualified choice for the job in Washington. But here comes Burr with that archaic Senate rule that allows a senator to “delay” an appointment without reason.

Makes you wonder: Are the Republicans in the Senate so pathetic in their minority status that they think they have to act like street thugs, throwing rocks at the Obama bus, hoping to make it crash? Do they hand out those rocks in their caucus meetings? North Carolina voters get ready; Burr is up for reelection n 2010.

The contrast between the current Republican party and Obama is glaring. Look at the way our new president conducted himself in Europe. The man is smart, he is authentic, and, regardless of the audience, he consistently mixes intelligence with charm. After eight long, dreary years, we have a leader who makes us proud to be Americans. Now we understand what Michelle really meant.

This four minute clip from CNN shows Obama as a world leader who, while he clearly loves his country, also demonstrates tremendous respect for other nations. Note that he speaks in response to a reporter’s question. His answer is unscripted.

Jim Hightower, the provocative Texan politician-commentator, is another jewel in the crown of our democracy. Open Left has a clip of Hightower in a “debate” with John McCain on the war in Afghanistan. This is a very creative exposure of the hollow arguments McCain tries to make.

The Open Left posting that gives us “Hightower v. McCain”, also reports the news that the far right in American politics, the crowd that believes military might is God’s gift to humankind, has formed yet another think tank to spread their dangerous toxins. Here is the heart of that report:

The same neocons who orchestrated the war in Iraq and undermined US efforts in Afghanistan the first time around are at it again, determined to sink us deeper into the costly Afghan quagmire. They have resurfaced in the form of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a Washington think tank headed by Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and Dan Senor.

Kagan, Kristol and Senor are the “thinkers” of the FPI, which gathered together like witches over a boiling stew to hold a summit meeting they called: “Afghanistan: Planning for Success”.

Sam Stein earlier provided a heads up of the FPI meeting last week on The Huffington Post, which, in addition to the Kagan-Kristol-Senor team, also included politicians, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Rep. John M. McHugh (R-NY), and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA).

The FPI is composed or conservatives who want to do nothing less than turn Afghanistan into “a massive, limitless war of Iraq proportions,” Stein writes.

Watch the MSM, and especially Fox News, for sightings of members of the Foreign Policy Initiative, which has emerged as only the most recent right-wing ideologs who continue to bark in the night like so many junk yard guard dogs. This crowd is noisy inside the junk yard, and extremely dangerous when they leave the yard and actually influence government policy.

Case in point: The neo cons who dominated the Bush foreign policy for eight years have shifted their fire to Afghanistan. Sam Stein again: “Kagan and Kristol were both directors at the Project for the New American Century, one of the key organizational catalysts persuading George W. Bush to launch preemptive military action in Iraq.”

In his Open Left posting on McCain and the FPI, ZP Zeller has this to say about McCain:

We already know where McCain stands on Afghanistan. He and fellow warmonger Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) celebrated the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war by urging the Obama administration to support an all-out military commitment in Afghanistan, regardless of cost. McCain clearly shares the FPI’s warped notion of “success” in Afghanistan, which he has discussed everywhere from the Op-Ed pages of the Washington Post to his recent speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

He envisions a Utopian outcome to this war, one in which our military engages in a broad-based, long-term counterinsurgency to create “a stable, secure, self-governing Afghanistan that is not a terrorist sanctuary.” Compounding that highly improbable scenario is the fact that McCain and the FPI are getting away with defining “success” in Afghanistan because not enough mainstream journalists or members of Congress are contesting their views.

Heller is right, not nearly enough MSM journalists are contesting the McCain FPI crusade to give us Iraq Redux. Except, that is, folks like Rachel Maddow and Jim Hightower, two progressive jewels constantly looking for ways to remind us that “truth, justice and the American way”, is more than just a Superman slogan.

Hightower and Maddow are two media jewels working to unsettle the conventional wisdom promoted by the MSM. We might think of them as canaries in the coal mines of American society, warning us against the indifference that can lead to increased extremism.

Avaraham Burg, in his book, The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from the Ashes, reminds us of how the German Weimar Republic opened itself to extremism.

Hitler came from the fringes of right-wing circles. Even though he was considered a lunatic, he went on to become the epicenter of the world’s nightmares. In etremist circles, people dip into pools of hatred, and pass this onto their companions. Inflammatory language arouses passions but creates false warmth. They allow themselves to speak words that should not be spoken in respectable places.

Extremism moves from the fringes of xenophobic nationalism to the more moderate right and from there on to the cultural and political mainstream. The circles of influence almost always parallel those of indifference.

. . . The people at the center are too indifferent and self-indulgent to pay too much attention, and they become accustomed to the sights and sounds of extremism. Once the noises from the right are part of the public agenda, then it becomes impossible to uproot them. (page 63).

Posted in Politics and Elections, The Human Condition | 2 Comments

Looking for a Bishop in The Family Tree

Posted on April 2, 2009 by wallwritings

By James M. Wall

This blog is concerned, among other things, with current events, history, and religious connections. You don’t like family history? Well stick around, at least long enough to hear, below, a rousing rendering of “Old Dan Tucker” from Bruce Springsteen.

My history is also your history. Our joint histories are our world’s history. We are all connected. You may find these connections to be of interest, and, just maybe, you could decide to launch your own search for a bishop in the family tree.

mckendree-marker2

When I started building on the research of Florence Day Ellis (my Aunt Florence) I knew we had a connection to a famous name (famous in church circles, that is) but we had never been able to confirm a “blood kin” connection.

McKendree is the “M” in my byline above. McKendree was my grandfather James McKendree Day’s middle name; my son, my grandson, and my great grandson, all have McKendree as their middle names.

The McKendree name is significant in our family history.

My Aunt Florence, who died before she could enjoy the luxury of internet searching, uncovered the first appearence of a McKendree in our family history. She was looking for a family connection to the American Revolution. Many women of her generation were eager to belong to the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution); membership required documented proof of a family member who had served on the American side in the rebellion against the British.

She found Daniel Tucker, originally from Virginia. He was a soldier on a pension from service in the Revolutionary army. Army records are valuable to family research. They qualified Aunt Florence for the DAR.

Daniel Tucker was the grandfather of the first McKendree in our family, my grandfather’s great-grandfather, the Rev. McKendree Tucker, who was born in South Carolina in 1808. Daniel’s son and McKendree’s father, the Rev. Epps Tucker, was a South Carolina itinerant (traveling) minister in South Carolina. Epps Tucker worked under the supervision of the Rev. William McKendree, a “presiding elder” in the southeastern United States.

Aunt Florence could find no family ties linking William McKendree to the Tucker family, so she assumed the McKendree name entered our family tree because Epps named his son for the future bishop. But what if there had been an actual “blood-kin” connection between the bishop and the Tucker family?

Aunt Florence could not find that connection. It did not help that Bishop McKendree never married.

Still, looking for the bishop in the family tree demanded further research. Methodists who know their church history will recognize the name of William McKendree as a major player in early American history. He was the first native-born American bishop of the Methodist Church. There are American churches and schools named for Bishop William McKendree. One of my cousins served as pastor of a McKendree Church in Nashville, Tennessee.

The first two Methodist bishops, Philip Asbury and Thomas Coke, were British born, both appointed by John Wesley, the church’s founder. (The Methodist Publishing House still has a string of book stores named after the first two bishops, Cokesbury.)

William McKendree, the first American born bishop, was not appointed; he was elected by delegates from American churches at the 1808 General Conference. This was the United States, not England. The people, not the authorities, selected their leaders.

John Wesley knew that his first two bishops, Asbury and Coke, could not keep up with the growing American church. Wesley authorized an election of an indigenous bishop to oversee the rapidly expanding Methodist local congregations and annual conferences, which were spreading rapidly along the east coast and westward into the new frontier.

bishop-mckendree1 The delegates elected one of their own, William McKendree, a “presiding elder”, a title given the traveling preacher who supervised and started new churches in the new country.

Churches on the frontier were developing out of what became known as the two Great Awakenings, historic waves of enthusiastic conversion experiences at camp meetings, some held deep into the wilderness. William McKendree was one of the converts from the second Great Awakening.

Outdoor preaching was a Methodist tradition; John Wesley started his “societies” in England from his converts, after the Anglican Church blocked him from preaching inside their churches. Wesley was an ordained Anglican priest, but he was a radical who demanded change. Church authorities drove him into the streets and the fields. Their mistake.

The First Great Awakening is seen by many historians as a precursor to the American Revolution. Later, the Second Great Awakening (1790s-1840s) contributed to the abolition of slavery. History, of course, is never a matter of a simple cause and effect, but the streams of history that grow into rivers as they rush toward the sea, is made up of many parts, including religious beliefs and inspired preaching.

Methodist historians like to brag that the reason Methodist churches outnumber Presbyterian churches today is that the Presbyterians, strict adherents of doctrine, had to send their clergy to school for additional education. Methodists, who ordained their clergy once they were “called” by God to preach, skimped on the education, put their preachers on horseback and sent them out to evangelize on a Godless frontier.

Methodist preachers carried their books in their saddlebags. They gained their education reading books while they rode the circuit.

McKendree Tucker’s father, Epps Tucker, was one of those pastors traveling on a South Carolina circuit–a network of churches. Our family assumed that when his son was born, Epps named the baby for his presiding elder, William McKendree, a respectful gesture, but still, no “blood kin”.

Epps Tucker had an additional distinction. His father was Daniel Tucker, veteran of the American Revolution (Aunt Florence’s ticket into the DAR), and a retired Anglican priest. In his final years he ran a ferry across the Savannah River, linking the states of South Carolina and Georgia.

It was during his final years that the Rev. Daniel Tucker became better known, thanks to a local folk song, as “old Dan Tucker”. That song found its way into early American musical history, and from all the evidence we have been able to find (including a state of Georgia road marker near Old Dan Tucker’s grave) is that it emerged from a song sung by slaves, which in the folk music tradition, added verses over time, all poking fun at “old Dan Tucker”.

Bruce Springstein has recorded this version of the song, as have many other folk singers. Listen carefully to the words and you will hear affectionate verses portraying “old Dan” as a lazy man always late for supper, and given to strong drink. (A more traditional country music version of the song is from Grandpa Jones, which may be accessed by clicking here.)

Local historians and family members deny that this is an accurate picture of “our” Dan, but popular history links the song to Daniel Tucker, so old Dan’s family accepts the mocking since it was good spirited, and besides, having a folk song in the family is rather special.

Missing, however, from our history, was an explanation as to why the McKendree name was given to my grandfather’s great grandfather. Ecclesiastical respect just wasn’t enough. We kept hoping to find that “blood kin” connection. Then one day, the hope turned into reality. With the help of the internet, I found our connection.

The mother of the Rev. McKendree Tucker (born in 1808), and the wife of the Rev. Epps Tucker, was Frances Tucker (born in 1790). The paper trail Aunt Florence had found gave McKendree’s mother’s name as Frances Unknown, no maiden name was available. She was 18 when McKendree was born. She had a maiden name, but what was it?

I spent a lot of time on the computer, searching through Ancestry.com. One day I made a simple discovery: Frances’ family name was McKendree. Frances and Epps named their son McKendree Tucker. It wasn’t just admiration for a future bishop. McKendree’s mother wanted her name vested in her son.

I still did not know if Frances McKendree was related in any way to Bishop McKendree. Only a family connection would provide the “blood kin” connection we needed. Then I found it. Bishop McKendree was Frances McKendree Tucker’s uncle. That made the bishop the great-uncle of McKendree Tucker, my grandfather’s great-grandfather.

Uncle William McKendree, the bishop, was the oldest son (he was born on July 6. 1757) in a family of eight children. His father was John McKendree Sr. (born in 1727) and his mother was Mary Dudley (born in 1729, in Virginia). Accounts differ as to John’s birthplace; it was either Scotland or Virginia.

What is important in our search in the family tree, however, is that one of Bishop William McKendree’s brothers was John McKendree, Jr., the father of Frances McKendree, McKendree Tucker’s mother. That makes her the Bishop’s niece, and the bishop is McKendree Tucker’s great-uncle. The search was over: The bishop and my extended family are all “blood kin”.

McKendree Tucker’s mother, Frances McKendree Tucker, died in 1818, when her son was 10. Old Dan Tucker died the same year. Both Frances and Dan are buried in the Tucker family cemetery.

They are buried in a wooded area on a small mountain above Lake Russell. tucker-grave-site1 Aunt Florence knew about this small family cemetery, which is why she was alarmed to discover a few decades back that a dam on the Savannah River would create a lake that could rise above and cover the Tucker graves.

I have only family memories to confirm this but we believe Aunt Florence wrote to Georgia Senator Richard Russell to plead for the preservation of the Tucker site. The word is that she asked Senator Russell to intervene and keep the lake’s water level from reaching the mountain top. Whether it was her letter or some other reason, the rising waters of Lake Russell have spared the Tucker cemetery.

After a family reunion in the summer of 2008, a few of us drove to the cemetery to visit the resting place of Old Dan Tucker and that of his wife, which is close to Elberton, Georgia. We also visited the grave of McKendree Tucker’s mother, Frances.

McKendree Tucker and his wife are buried in a family plot near Opelika, Alabama. Bishop William McKendree’s original grave has been moved to a place of honor on the campus of Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee.

And that concludes this part of the research journey: Three generations of Tucker preachers, starting with Old Dan Tucker, introduced a famous Methodist name into our family through Bishop McKendree’s niece. The search was worth it: Bishop William McKendree and I are “blood kin”. I have the records to prove it.

(Updated October 14, 2019).

Posted in Religious Faith | 19 Comments

Wallwritings

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Wingnuts, Blinders and Bubbles: Obama Continues U.S. Obeisance to Israel

Yes to Tutu, Cuba Travel, and Marriage in Vermont

Could Avraham Burg Be Israel’s Future Barack Obama?

Jewels in the American Crown: Obama, Hightower and Maddow

Looking for a Bishop in The Family Tree

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