Part I

On 12 December 2011 hundreds of Israeli settler fanatics besieged a West Bank IDF army base. They destroyed equipment, set fires, and even stoned the base soldiers. This was the second such attack in a month. The cause? Anger over the army's dismantlement of a small number of isolated, unauthorized settler outposts. The Chief of the Central Command of the Israel "Defense" Forces, Major General Avi Misrahi, is quoted as saying "I have not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service." He must not have been looking.

This was not an exceptional event. The subsequent indignation over the attack expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu ("red lines have been crossed") was, as Alex Fishman writing in Yedioth Ahronoth put it, staged hypocrisy. The Prime Minister is certainly aware that for some time there has been on-going skirmishing between the settlers and government security forces. Right wing settlers regularly throw rocks and fire bombs at police and army vehicles and "physical altercations" between settlers and Israeli police and soldiers are "almost routine." This is so despite the fact that the government, both Prime Minister and Knesset, "either tacitly or openly" support the settlers. Then why the hatred and why the attacks?

At this stage the battle is over strategy. The Israeli government wants to gobble up all of Palestine in an orderly step by step fashion. In part, this is to avoid too much international criticism at any particular stage of the process. On the other hand, the settlers don't give a damn about international opinion – no more than does al-Qaeda, to which they have an unsavory resemblance. Led "by fundamentalist religious leaders who do not recognize the state of Israel and its laws," they are driven by religious fanaticism and have no respect for governments or their agents. It is their ideological conviction that all of Palestine (including, by the way, Jordan) must be Jewish as soon as possible. The authorities sometime get in the way of this goal and that has led the settlers to, as Fishman puts it, "terrorize not only the Palestinian population but also the police and the army."

Prime Minister Netanyahu, belatedly noticing an erosion of government authority, has begun to set rules against settler violence when it is directed toward the IDF and police (but not toward the Palestinians). The New York Times reports that from now on such "radical Israelis" attacking soldiers or policemen will be treated just like "Palestinian militants." That is they will be "detained for long periods without charge and tried in military courts."

Alas, this new toughness won't work. For years Israeli governments have looked the other way as thousands of armed religious fanatics organized themselves and got stronger and more self-assured. Now, as Adam Keller of Gush Shalom tells us, "the Golem has turned on its creator." These are the people who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. What makes Netanyahu believe that Israel's present army, police and courts which, reminiscent of the Weimar Republic, regularly show sympathy and leniency toward these criminals, are going to change their attitude on his orders? When a military reporter asked a brigade commander if he was prepared to act toward settler hostility in the same manner as he would Palestinian hostility, he answered "you would not expect me to open fire on a Jew...I am certain you didn't mean that."

The reporter would have gotten a very different answer if she had asked the fanatic settlers about how far they were willing to go. Anshel Pfeffer writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz notes that "the only red line that has yet to be crossed is a scenario in which an Israeli citizen [belonging to] the extreme settler right would open fire on IDF soldiers. There are those in Israel's security forces who fear that day is not so distant."

Netanyahu's apparent change of heart comes too late. What we have here is incipient civil war. Any really serious effort to stop these fanatics will result in their turning their weapons on those who represent the government. What you sow is what you reap.

Part II

This climate of internecine hostility contaminates the Jewish diaspora as well. There is no rock throwing or armed men threatening violence, but the hatred is there. Jewish critics of Israeli behavior are categorized as "Israel-haters" or, alternatively, "self-hating Jews." This is often expressed with the same vehemence displayed by Israel's settler fanatics. And, indeed, those pointing fingers in the U.S. are often supporters of the extremists on the West Bank.

Last week Howard Gutman, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, addressed "a group of European Jewish lawyers gathered...to discuss anti-Semitism" Gutman told them that there was now two different kinds of anti-Semitism: a "classic" type that is "directed against Jews for being Jews" and "a newer form" that is a product of "the Israeli-Arab conflict and can therefore be mitigated by reducing Israeli-Palestinian tensions." This is actually a conclusion that was reached by Israel's Defense Ministry as early as 1994. No matter, when Gutman's statement became public "the long knives" came out "for another Jewish liberal who committed the sin of stating the uncomfortably obvious truth about a causal relation between Israeli policy and Muslim anti-Semitism."

The Republican Jewish Coalition's Executive Director Matthew Brooks called Gutman's revelation "outrageous" and one that "makes excuses for anti-Semitic hatred and bigotry." Senator Joe Lieberman called Gutman's remarks "inexcusable" and Representative Gary Ackerman of New York suggested that Gutman himself might be anti-Semitic.

Again, the charge of anti-Semitism can be and frequently is leveled against fellow Jews who are critical of Israel. The logic goes something like this: Judaism and Israel are one and the same. Ergo if you are critical of Israeli behavior you are critical of Jewish behavior and that makes you an anti-Semite. Very neat. Of course, the whole train of thought rests on the false assumption that Israel and Judaism are two sides of the same coin.

Despite the viral reaction, Jewish criticism of Israel is growing quickly and this creates a frustrating dilemma for the Zionists. The pro-Israeli blogger Steven Plaut describes this situation in catastrophic terms. "Jewish anti-Semitism is all around us, part of the political air we breathe, a modern disease. In the twenty-first century the world is experiencing an explosion of it, a virtual plague."

Part III

None of this Zionist extremism can be dismissed as a passing phenomenon. It has been with us too long. In fact it has been with us since 1917 and the Balfour Declaration. That is when a certain segment of European Jewry began its obsessive drive to create and maintain a state for one group only. It was then, and continues to be an inherently racist project. Ideologies, like Zionism, that support such projects usually reject all opposition. And opposition from erstwhile members of the in-group is the very worst because it exposes the false nature of claims of ethnic, religious or racial solidarity.

When and if Israeli society comes to its senses and decides to rid itself of the Occupied Territories the settler fanatics will resist "fanatically," and the civil war that is now incipient will release its full potential violence. When and if that happens there will be repercussions for U.S. and European Jews and they too may well entail violence. It would seem that the people chosen to be a "light unto the nations" have only managed to create another badly flawed nation state–one with a preference for apartheid policies. Zionism said "let modern Israel be" and, pop, the light went out.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

No related posts.

A former AIPAC official who attacked CAP writers on Israel may himself be the one to suffer consequences

By Glenn Greenwald*

(updated below)

"I sure hope that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" - Tom Friedman, New York Times, today.

"[T]he U.S. government fed up with Israel's leadership [is] a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America's" - Tom Friedman, New York Times, September 18, 2011.

A significant and potentially consequential controversy erupted last week when Politico's Ben Smith - seemingly out of nowhere - wrote about what he described as deviations from "the bipartisan consensus on Israel" from several writers and bloggers at two of Washington's most well-connected Democratic political organizations: Center for American Progress and Media Matters. Naming Matt Duss, Eli Clifton, Eric Alterman and Ali Ghraib at CAP, along with former AIPAC employee MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters, Smith wrote that they regularly offer "a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins" and added: "warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP's] blogs." The article included a quote from a former AIPAC official accusing the two groups of publishing "anti-Israel" and "borderline anti-Semitic stuff."

I have long been surprised - and impressed - by the high-quality, independent roster of commentators which an establishment entity like CAP employs to write about Middle East issues on its ThinkProgress blog. Even though most of it is under the guise of defending Obama on Israel from neocon attacks, those writers (and others at CAP, such as Zaid Jilani), are willing to question U.S. support for Israel and the actions of the Israeli government, as well as to use their critical faculties, to a far greater extent than is normally permitted in establishment D.C. discourse (that's why I was so disappointed in that recent unsigned, officious, war-mongering, White-House-talking-points propaganda put on the CAP blog under the name of the organization: it was atypical of their national security writing). But there is nothing fringe, anti-Israel, or remotely anti-Semitic about anything these commentators write. This Politico article simply features the standard, tired smears from those who ironically do more than anyone to trivialize "anti-Semitism" by cynically exploiting the accusation as a club to suppress dissent over Israel. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that it took this long for these exploiters of anti-Semitism accusations to launch this attack at CAP and Media Matters writers.

As it turns out - and this was rather predictable - Smith's article did not appear out of nowhere. It was engineered by one of Washington's most odious smear merchants, former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. He has made a career out of working in the shadows, surreptitiously encouraging reporters to depict Israel critics as anti-Semites. For instance, during the controversy over the alleged anti-Semitism of Obama appointee Chas Freeman (accused of the crime of questioning U.S. support for Israel), Block publicly stated that AIPAC had no position on Freeman, but The Washington Post's Walter Pincus revealed that Block "provided critical material about Freeman [to journalists], albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him." That's what Block does: he scurries around in the dark feeding dossiers to reporters about people who are insufficiently supportive of Israel so that they will be publicly accused of anti-Semitism (at the time of the Freeman controversy, Politico's Smith similarly noted that "Jewish and pro-Israel organizations largely decided not to make the fight against Freeman a public crusade, though they were the first, and fiercest, Freeman opponents and made their views known privately").

Predictably, Block is now the leading force behind the McCarthyite campaign to have CAP writers labeled as fringe Israel-haters and even anti-Semites for the same crime Freeman committed. After publication of the Politico article, Smith acknowledged he was fed a file by Block listing the offending passages from the CAP writers. Block, in turn, was quoted in the Politico article as accusing CAP of publishing "borderline anti-Semitic stuff," specifically from the Jewish writer, Eric Alterman. And then late last week, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott broke the story of how Block, on a private email list filled with neocon writers and journalists, was "shopping a 3,000-word trove of opposition research against bloggers critical of Israel" and urging those journalists to "echo" and "amplify" the attack on those writers as anti-Semitic. Using classic guilt by association tactics - CAP's posts have been "applauded by revolting allies like the pro-HAMAS and anti-Zionist/One State Solution advocate Ali Abunumiah," he announced - Block issued his marching orders: "These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players."

Except a funny thing happened on the well-traveled road of Block's smear campaign. The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list - led by The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause - dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block's attacks against these writers. But Block also created an even larger backlash against himself, from the Democratic Party players whom his accusations were intended to rile up and who are normally supportive - or at least perfectly tolerant - of these types of smear campaigns.

Block's business partner - the long-time Israel fanatic, Joe Lieberman fan and go-to lobbyist for despots around the world, Lanny Davis - publicly and forcefully repudiated Block's outburst. Even more surprising, The Washington Post's Greg Sargent reported that - as a result of the Salon story - "two top think tanks in Washington [the "centrist" Progressive Policy Institute (contact here) and the Truman National Security Project (contact here)] are mulling whether to sever ties with" Block as a result of his smear campaign. Specifically, "PPI head Will Marshall [the "New Democrat" Iraq War supporter] privately told Block that the think tank would sever ties with Block if he didn't retract the charges," while "at Truman, top officials privately debated via email whether to cut ties with Block after the Salon story broke."

Josh Block

That said, it could be very significant if Block ends up losing his affiliation with one or both of those think tanks. It's been a very long time in Washington - if it has ever happened - when someone suffered any consequences for launching a baseless McCarthyite campaign of "anti-Semitism" to punish critics of Israel. As Sargent astutely put it: "the question of whether the think tanks will remain affiliated with Block will be seen as a referendum on the larger issue of whether demeaning Israel critics as anti-Semitic will be considered acceptable discourse among foreign policy experts." Block has backed off some of his most incendiary accusations, but has apologized for nothing and continues to insist that the views he targeted should not be tolerated in any mainstream institution (including questioning whether Iran has a nuclear weapons program (what the last NIE did) or "policy or political rhetoric that is hostile to Israel": those views, insists Block, are strictly off-limits).

This episode reveals yet again just how pernicious is this manipulative use of "anti-Semitism" to intimidate people out of questioning U.S. policy toward Israel. Block targeted CAP because he knows full well that its two most important organizational resources - its White-House/Party access and its donor base - can be harmed even from the innuendo that it is committing heresy on Israel. Unsurprisingly, while the targeted writers have not been expressly admonished, CAP has engaged in blatant, public efforts to distance itself from their own writers' commentary and to assure everyone that they are not heretics when it comes to Israel.

Smith's original article reported that "CAP officials have told angry allies that the bloggers don't speak for the organization." One senior CAP official told Smith: "what one blogger or analyst may write isn't necessarily indicative of what our policy recommendations are for the administration or Congress when I'm doing meetings with our friends in government."

Two other senior CAP officials, in the wake of the Politico article, ran to the ThinkProgress blog to write an incredibly defensive apologia assuring everyone that they do not deviate on Israel, clicking their heels and affirming several oaths as though they're reading from some mandated D.C. script: "Iran's nuclear program is a strong point of concern for us, the U.S., and its allies"; CAP's goal is "ensuring Israel's long term security by securing its neighborhood"; "the multilateral sanctions framework engineered by the Obama administration is an important tool in pressuring Iran"; "It is a widely accepted fact that Iran has a nuclear program"; "while we take nothing off the table, we do not believe there is any evidence that a military strike would achieve those goals, a view shared by America's top military officials." Yet another CAP official, in response to the criticisms from the Wiesenthal Center, ran to affirm that we "take the threat of Iran's nuclear program seriously," that "the Iranian issue is a strong point of concern for us," and that "we support the Obama administration's position of 'no options off the table'" (while not supporting a military strike).

Given all this, is there any question - no matter what the outcome is - that this will have an effect on how CAP commentators write about Israel? Here you have their institutional employer under widespread attack for being anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic because of what they've written. You have a Washington Post columnist fueling those accusations repeatedly. You have your own organization's officials publicly, expressly and repeatedly distancing themselves from what you've said by making clear that it's not the organization's views, all while specifying what the acceptable boundaries are for your commentary on these matters (namely: nothing to the left of the Obama administration's official position). You now know that your writings on this topic are being monitored by the Josh Blocks of the world.

I have respect for the specific CAP and Media Matters writers targeted by this smear campaign. They have real integrity, and I doubt that any of them will consciously curb what they write. But I also have little doubt that this episode will be in their heads every time they go to write about Israel. They'll be wondering if they are crossing an organizational line, if they are going to prompt renewed smears against them and their bosses, if they should just refrain on the ground that the cost is not worth it. And that, of course, is precisely the goal of these smear campaigns: to make the cost of criticizing Israel and/or questioning blind U.S. support for Israel so high - personally and professionally - that most people are unwilling to do it.

And still - even now that the Israel debate has been opened up more than ever before (as those above quotes from Tom Friedman reflect - these smear tactics still work. Part of the problem is that most liberal writers, bloggers and pundits - especially the non-Jewish ones - are petrified of getting anywhere near the word "Israel," and that's been true for quite some time. One CAP writer noted to me the conspicuous silence among liberal bloggers and writers over this coordinated smear campaign against two of the most important progressive D.C. groups, and that's par for the course. By contrast, the entire Right jumps on every one of these smear campaigns and magnifies and amplifies it as loudly as possibly; note how the right-wing Breitbart site immediately lavished praise on Smith for "Exposing Media Matters, CAP as Anti-Israel Democrat Orgs." The smears of "anti-Israel" and especially "anti-Semitism" still pack a potent punch - especially (though by no means only) for non-Jewish political commentators - and most progressives will therefore avoid it at all costs. Indeed, the Politico article included this passage:

Podesta, who recently stepped down from his longtime position as CAP's president, "always wanted to stay out of Israel stuff from the beginning, because it's a no-win issue for them," a liberal Israel policy thinker and CAP ally said. "They're obviously a progressive place, but if you want to attract a mainstream Clinton, New Democrat milieu, you can't really do real progressive Israel stuff."

Those who are targeted with these smears for heresy on Israel know that - no matter how baseless the smears are - few will step forward to defend them. They'll be left alone, hung out to dry, in the face of a very aggressive neocon assault. When Walt and Mearsheimer were under vicious attack for The Israel Lobby, even many tenured academicians who had privately expressed support for their work ran away and refused to defend them. One CAP blogger, Zaid Jilani, has now apologized for and deleted tweets where he used the term "Israel-firster" even though (a) everyone knows there are American political activists - both evangelical Christians and Jewish - whose political worldview is dominated by allegiance to Israel and (b) even long-time stalwart Israel supporters like Tom Friedman now describe how U.S. officials are "hostage" to the "powerful pro-Israel lobby" that can force them to place Israel's interests over their own country's.

Every few months, one of these controversies erupts: some writer or official stands publicly accused of being insufficiently supportive of Israel; all kinds of innuendo about motives is smeared over the person; and demands are made that they be repudiated, fired or denied a position. No matter the outcome of the specific controversy, the effect is to re-bolster orthodoxies on Israel, fortify the restrictions on debate, and to send a warning to future would-be heretics about the cost of such behavior. It would be sweet justice indeed (as well as beneficial) if in this case the smear artist, rather than his targets, is the one who suffers consequences. But one should not doubt that the intended effect has been nonetheless achieved.

UPDATE: New Jersey Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman today called on Tom Friedman to apologize for the comments in his column today about the Israel Lobby. Declared Rothman: Friedman's remarks are "scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel" and constituting "aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters." That's just hilarious: if Tom Friedman of all people is now so anti-Israel and borderline anti-Semitic that he needs to publicly apologize, then you've reduced the accusation - and the movement that routinely spews it - to pure caricature.

I should also have noted here that while CAP has distanced itself from the comments of its bloggers, Media Matters, to its credit, has made clear it stands fully behind Rosenberg.

Finally, I'll be on Cenk Uygur's new Current TV show tonight at 7:00 pm EST talking about the detention bill.

* Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some
, is an indictment of America’s two-tiered system of justice, which vests political and financial elites with immunity even for egregious crimes while subjecting ordinary Americans to the world’s largest and most merciless penal state. Greenwald was named by The Atlantic as one of the 25 most influential political commentators in the nation. He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and is the winner of the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.

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By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Photo courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists...."
-- Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

War-making storylines tend to lose their steam. Sustained warfare requires more than just a plausible Evil Doer. A credible narrative is also essential. To remind us who to hate, who better than a murderous Nordic Muslim-hater?

Far-fetched? How many Americans had heard of the Taliban before March 2001 when destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan was reported worldwide as a 'Cultural Holocaust'? Voila! An Evil Doer brand emerged and was soon repackaged as Islamo-fascism.

Six months later, an attack on U.S. soil left little doubt that outraged Americans would be provoked to war. Combine an emotionally wrenching mass murder with manipulated intelligence and an invasion was assured-of Iraq. That miscue required sophisticated pre-staging.

Residents of Washington, DC well recall the sniper attacks that left ten dead during the October 2002 lead-up to a Senate vote on a war resolution sponsored by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman. Those well-timed murders ensured a heightened sense of insecurity and helped ratchet up the requisite hatred-to invade a nation that played no role in 911.

Remember the Times Square Terrorist? A car belonging to a Muslim was found with two WalMart propane tanks, an alarm clock, a box of fireworks and some fertilizer. When? In May 2010 during the lead-up to a UN vote on a nuclear-free Middle East-opposed by Israel.

To sustain hate requires a sustained stream of plausible reasons to hate. Plus careful maintenance of a 'generally accepted truth' that keeps attention focused on a credible threat.

Preparing the Minds

Islamo-phobia was a fresh threat when it first appeared in a 1993 article in Foreign Affairs. Yet it dates from 1990 when Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, an avid Zionist, touted "The Roots of Muslim Rage." By 1996, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington was ready to publish The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

With more than 100 nongovernmental organizations promoting The Clash, Americans experienced a seamless segue from an old narrative to a new. Without missing a beat in Pentagon spending, we ended a global Cold War and, by consensus, began a global War on Terrorism.

Huntington argued that cultural and religious identities would emerge as the primary source of conflict. To gain traction, The Clash consensus required a series of events that could be plausibly blamed on Muslim Evil Doers. That was 15 years ago-a long time to sustain a storyline.

With Osama bin Laden dead and war-weary Americans nearing the tenth anniversary of 911, The narrative was losing its punch. Plus the storytellers face a transparency problem: Intelligence agencies worldwide have identified pro-Israelis as the common source of the manipulated intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq.

What's a Zionist to do? Answer: look to past successes.

Timing is Everything

Ten days prior to 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard. Why then? The timing suggests Tel Aviv was signaling its operatives and sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers).

The Norwegian shooter is akin to the narrative-advancing snipers who emerged in the lead-up to the Senate vote authorizing the U.S. military to invade Iraq. In the lead-up to next month's UN vote on statehood for Palestine, the carnage in Norway freshened up a stale storyline.

This latest mass murder was committed on the 65^th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv. That mass murder was an operation of the Irgun, Zionist-terrorist predecessors to the Likud Party of today's Benjamin Netanyahu.

The same night that Israel launched its Six-Day War in June 1967, Irgun operative Mathilde Krim was continuing her torrid affair with President Lyndon Johnson-in the White House. Why then? Because that land grab ensured the roots of the Muslim rage required to shape future events.

Why would a Norwegian Zionist target Norwegians? For the same reason that Irgun Zionist Menachem Begin murdered Jews in the King David Hotel: to advance a narrative.

In September 2000, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a provocative march to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. When, after a year of calm, suicide bombings recommenced, Sharon and Netanyahu warned that only when Americans "feel our pain" would we appreciate their plight. To feel Israel's pain, they said, would require that America lose 4,500 to 5,000 to terrorism, the initial estimate of those lives lost to a mass murder one year later.

The well-timed operation in Norway turned to mass murder as a means to remake the world order in plain sight. Those complicit specialize in maintaining a storyline that dates from when the medieval Crusades pit Christians against Muslims.

Absent the success of such deceit, we may forget whom to hate.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

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By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

At least seven times today [12 February] I heard TV newscasters refer to Muslim or Islamic extremists.

The amount and level of this kind of fraudulent suggestiveness has been increasing almost daily.

I call it fraudulent because people hearing this mix of Muslim with extremist repeated often enough become brainwashed into thinking that all Muslims are extremists.

The reference to Islamic extremists is frequently made on Fox News by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

A headline on MMTV asserts that "O'Reilly supports Rep. King's Islamic Extremism Hearings: 'you've got to get a handle on it'". The language of Islamic extremist has infected the US congress.

For years, since he was on CNN, Glenn Beck has made wild false claims, like, "Islamic extremism is the biggest threat to our way of life since World War II and we'll never be able to fight it – if we can't see it".

Now, as chief Fox propagandist, Glenn Beck has the American left wing collaborating with his paranoid vision: "Believe what you want but the left is working hand-in-hand with the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim extremists... Hand-in-hand"...

Sean Hannity isn't much better, saying things like, "It seems to me that Islamic extremism is the 21st century threat that (communism) posed in the last century..."

Similar Islamophobic references have been heard on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and other networks in the USA. Even reporters on the liberal MSNBC have been guilty of falsely connecting Islam and extremism.

The Associated Press says: "A Senate report on the Fort Hood shooting is sharply critical of the FBI's failure to recognize warning signs that an army psychiatrist had become an Islamist extremist..."

Do lunatics who commit wanton killings need to be identified according to their religious affiliations? If so why weren't the killers at Columbine and in Arizona recently referred to as Christian extremists?

That is if indeed they were Christians. The media only seems interested in making the religious connection when the mad murderer also happens to be a Muslim.

A Senate committee, headed by Joe Lieberman, asserted that "The enemy – Islamist extremists – must be labelled correctly and explicitly ... in order for the military to counter the extremism."

Recently, while commenting on the protesters in Egypt, several reporters referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as extremists.

Professor Sami Hamod says that the Muslim Brotherhood originated as a tool of America. How can they be extremists?

It seems that members of groups opposed to US interference in the Middle East get labelled Islamic extremists.

Palestinians trying to protect their property have been dubbed Muslim extremists, even when they're Christians.

According to Western broadcasters, all members of Hamas and Hezbollah automatically qualify as Islamic extremists.

The entire population of Iran seems to have qualified as Islamic extremists because Iran refuses to cow-tow to Israel and America.

Syria and Lebanon, despite non-Muslim populations, have been dubbed Islamist extremists because they have failed to sign peace treaties with Israel.

So-called Islamic extremists have forced the king of Jordan to fire his entire cabinet. In Yemen, they provided the impetus for Ali Abdullah Saleh to announce that he won't run for re-election. Both instances were obviously meant to stave off popular rebellions.

Despite the fact that Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the departed president of Tunisia, were both dictators hated by their publics, the rebellions have been referred to as the work of Islamic terrorists.

Recently Tony Blair warned the West that it must abandon its "wretched posture of apology" towards Islamic extremism.

Newscasters, reporters, commentators, politicians and leaders, infected with religious bigotry, need urgent rehabilitation.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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By Lauren Indvik

A State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week that discussing WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger their employment prospects.

The official, a former student of the school, called the career services office of his alma mater to advise students not to post links to WikiLeaks documents, nor to make comments on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as “engaging in these activities would call into question [a student's] ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government,” he was quoted as saying in an e-mail sent to students by the career services office on Tuesday.

The warning coincided with WikiLeaks’s release of thousands of secret U.S. embassy cables on Sunday, November 28. The site has since been plagued by multiple DDoS attacks, and termination of service notifications from its DNS provider, EveryDNS.net, its temporary website host, Amazon, and PayPal, which handled many of the donations the organization received.

Student Issandr El Amrani posted a copy of the e-mail on his blog on Thursday, the same day Senator Joseph Lieberman and other lawmakers proposed legislation that would hold those who publish the names of any U.S. intelligence sources “criminally accountable.” A full copy of the e-mail, which the career services office has since confirmed sending, is pasted below:

From: “Office of Career Services”

Date: November 30, 2010 15:26:53 EST:

Hi students,

We received a call today from a SIPA alumnus who is working at the State Department. He asked us to pass along the following information to anyone who will be applying for jobs in the federal government, since all would require a background investigation and in some instances a security clearance.

The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.

Regards,

Office of Career Services

According to an e-mail sent by spokesperson Phillip J. Crowley to The Huffington Post, the warning does not, however, represent a formal policy position. “We have instructed State Department employees not to access the WikiLeaks site and download posted documents using an unclassified network since these documents are still classified. We condemn what Mr. Assange is doing, but have given no advice to anyone beyond the State Department to my knowledge,” he wrote.

Employees in the State Department are among the many government workers who were told by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget not to view the leaked documents without the required security clearance on Friday.

Although you may not be going for a job at the State Department any time soon, does the warning nevertheless make you wary of discussing WikiLeaks on public forums such as Facebook and Twitter?

[Mashable]

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By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Historical Precedent

By Bendib

Historical Need

The truth is that there has always been a gap between the interests of the general citizenry and interests as they take shape at the level of state policy. It is within that gap that secret diplomacy thrives. One can see this most clearly in the case of dictatorships. For instance, if you travel about the Middle East, say to Jordan or Egypt, everyone takes it for granted that there is no connection between the business of the people and the business of the state. The state is run by narrow elites who make policy according to their own needs and the public plays no role and is given little consideration. Its fate is to be lied to and manipulated. So, of course, those elites are going to operate from back rooms and behind censored media. The person on the street knows this to be so and accepts it because, if he or she protests, the "security" services will come after them. They will be charged with endangering the state or framed for some other crime. And their lives will be ruined.

But what about democracies? Well, the truth is that they too are run by political and economic elites whose interests are rarely the same as the general public. That is why, when the government uses the term "national interest," one should always be suspicious. When it comes to foreign policy this can be most clearly seen in the policies long adopted toward places like Cuba and Israel. A very good argument can be made that the policies pursued for decades by the US government toward these two nations is no more than product of special interest manipulation with no reference to actual national interest or well being. Indeed, in the former case it led to an illegal invasion of Cuba by US backed forces in 1961 and no doubt encouraged the Cubans to allow Soviet missiles on their territory in 1962. The latter has contributed to numerous disastrous actions on the part of the US in the Middle East out of which came the attack on September 11, 2001. None of this is in the interest of anyone other than the elites whose semi-secret machinations lead to the policies pursued.

The difference between dictatorships and democracies are ones of style and, in a democracy, the option to shift emphasis in terms of elite interests served, each time there is an election. Democratic elites have learned that they do not need to rely on the brute force characteristic of dictatorships as long as they can sufficiently control the public information environment. You restrict meaningful free speech to the fringes of the media, to the "outliers" along the information bell curve. You rely on the sociological fact that the vast majority of citizens will either pay no attention to that which they find irrelevant to their immediate lives, or they will believe the official story line about places and happenings of which they are otherwise ignorant. Once you have identified the official story line with the official policy being pursued, loyalty to the policy comes to equate to patriotism. It is a shockingly simple formula and it usually works. Given this scenario, Woodrow Wilson and his notion of open diplomacy represents an historical anomaly. When, in 1919, he arrived at Versailles for the peace conference the representatives of Britain, France and Italy thought him a hopeless idealist. And perhaps he really was.

Incompatibility with Democracy

Whether Wilson was or was not an idealist cannot affect the fact that secret diplomacy almost never represents the public interest. It cannot affect the fact that an honest assessment of secret diplomacy, an honest look at what most of the time it has historically wrought, leads to the conclusion that it is harmful. It often leads to unnecessary conflict and it undermines the democratic process because it denies the public's right to know what is being done in its name. And, in a democracy, it cannot be sustained without the help of massive state lying and propaganda.

So, what does that say about those American leaders railing against Wikileaks and crying for Julian Assange's head? Does it mean, to use Noam Chomsky's characterization, that they have a "deep hatred for democracy"? I doubt they have thought it out that far. Some of them, such as Sarah Palin, who wants Assange hunted down like Osama bin Laden (which means, I guess, hunted down ineffectively), Newt Gingrich, who likens Assange to an "enemy combatant," and Bill Kristol who wants the government to kidnap and then "whack" Assange, are personalities of the extreme right who essentially advocate the policies of dictators. It is not hard to identify these folks with a particular ideology and elite interest group. Others, like Senator Joseph Lieberman, have done their utmost to shut down Wikileaks through pressuring on-line operators such as Amazon who, until recently, have cooperated with the whistle blowing website. Lieberman has taken it upon himself to use his political clout to determine what the entire American population can and cannot know. Is Joe Lieberman doing all this for the public good? It is unlikely. He does declare, with a lot of righteous indignation, that the information Wikileaks has made public is "stolen." Yet, as Daniel Ellsberg has suggested, Julian Assange and Wikileaks are "serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." In other words, Lieberman is on shaky legal grounds when he throws around a word like "stolen." But, I suspect he cares little about this and his real motivation is probably special interest driven. Given Liberman's history as an obsessive devotee of Israel, would he be so fixated on Wikileaks if the Zionist state was not embarrassingly involved in recent revelations?

Conclusion

Woodrow Wilson had it wrong about America. The United States is not a morally superior nation and its elites have always been just as corruptible and obsessed with secrecy as any in Europe. His plea for open diplomacy never had a chance on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. If Wilson's idealism was seriously wounded at Versailles, it was killed outright by the Republican majority in the Senate which refused to ratify the peace treaty he brought home. Why? Largely because of the desire to frustrate and ruin a Democratic president. Sound familiar?

Can one imagine circumstances in which diplomatic interaction necessities secrecy? I am sure one can. However, those circumstances should be exceptional. They should not constitute the norm. And, there should be clear criteria as to what constitutes such circumstances. Arriving at those criteria should be part of a widespread public debate over a seminal right– the right to know what your government is doing in your name. At this point you might ask, what widespread public debate? Well, the one that supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks are trying desperately to begin.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

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Al Qaeda Ink Cartridge Bomb

By Maidhc Ó Cathail * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it's worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.

A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago", Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. "The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world," declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. "But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government - and they have not weakened Israeli resolve." Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's rogue behaviour as an "ongoing war against the Jews".

Binyamin Netanyahu, a frequent London house guest of Murdoch and a likely recipient of his political contributions, was quick to make hay of the foiled plot. Briefing the cabinet on his impending address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli prime minister told them that it would be "held against the background of reports about the attempt to attack the Jewish community in Chicago".

Linking the parcel bomb plot to some of the most iconic terrorist attacks of the post-9/11 era, Netanyahu said that "it does not matter if the target was a synagogue in Chicago or a railway station in Madrid, London, Mumbai or Bali". Deftly associating his increasingly isolated government with the victims of those attacks, the Israeli prime minister proclaimed: "We are facing a growing wave of terrorism by extremist Islam."

Netanyahu, never one prone to understatement, offered this analysis of the unsuccessful attempt to use desktop printers as terror weapons: "It is growing in the scope and brazen gall of its attacks, in the weapons with which it is arming itself, and in the sweeping objectives of the leaders of global terrorism."

He then assured his colleagues that "one of the main issues" he would be addressing in New Orleans with American Jewish leaders was "the steps that the civilized and free world must take in order to stop this wave that threatens us all."

Needless to say, those "steps" are unlikely to include an end to the 43-year occupation and colonization of the West Bank or a lifting of the four-year blockade of Gaza.

An American apologist for Israel's self-appointed guardian of "the civilized and free world" took a similar line. Joel Pollak, a Republican candidate in the mid-term elections, released a statement condemning the attempted terror attack, saying he would be spending the Jewish sabbath in West Rogers Park "in solidarity with the people of the ninth congressional district who were the direct targets of Al Qaeda terror". Sounding a lot like Netanyahu, Pollak attempted to rally his constituents by telling them, "We must not stop fighting to eradicate the twin evils of terror and hatred."

Again, we can take it as read that the "terror and hatred" Americans are being urged to combat only applies to Israel's enemies (PDF).

The Israeli news website DEBKA-Net-Weekly, which describes itself as "the leading geopolitical newsletter", has even attempted to implicate Israel's current enemy number one, Iran. The next issue, for subscribers only, promises to reveal "how the Al-Qaeda air package plot fit [sic] into the selective partnership between Tehran and Al-Qaeda and homes in on the areas where their schemes dovetail".

But how trustworthy is this "leading newsletter"?

"Debka is prepared mostly by former Mossad operatives. A reliable stream of information," Martin Peretz, the Islamophobic editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-Israel New Republic assures us.

Ever since an Israeli firm let the Christmas Day crotch bomber "slip through" security at Schiphol Airport without a passport, a few influential voices with close ties to Israel have been instrumental in making Yemen "the new buzzword".

Appearing on Fox News two days later, the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman, announced: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war."

Within a week, Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center in the Brookings Institution, had an op-ed in the Daily Beast titled "The menace of Yemen". Touting the botched Christmas Day plot as evidence of "the growing ambition of Al-Qaeda's Yemen franchise," Riedel called for "significant American support to defeat AQAP".

Riedel's employer, the Saban Center, is named after Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media mogul, who in 2002 pledged 13 million dollars to found the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Two years later, Saban admitted to the New York Times: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."

"The US may be walking into a bit of a trap," warns Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

That "trap" has been best described by a former CIA officer. "America's misguided war on terror", Philip Giraldi pointed out in a recent article, "is in fact a complete adoption of Israeli security paradigms without any regard for the actual threats that confront the US, making Israel's many enemies also the foes of Washington".

Israel must be very grateful indeed for this latest terror scare. If Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula did not exist, they might have to invent it.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

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By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The phony intelligence used to induce our March 2005 invasion of Iraq has been dusted off. This time it's being deployed to take us into Iran.

Same scam. Same storyline. Same fraud-even featuring some of the same players.

Except that this time around their deception lacks the broader context required to gain traction for their phony content. That key difference makes today's perpetrators far more transparent-for those willing to look.

Those foisting on us this latest fraud also face another challenge: Americans now realize it was Israel and its advocates who fixed that false intelligence around a Zionist agenda.

That realization adds combustibility to the facts now fueling Israel's fast-fading legitimacy.

Each week brings new insights that undermine generally accepted truths about 911 and our response to that mass murder on U.S. soil. As the costs continue to rise in both blood and treasure, the credibility of those who sold us this "Clash" continues its steady decline.

One key player in this long-running fraud remains unfazed: mainstream media.

In March 2002, Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg published in The New Yorker a story alleging an alliance between the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq. Though an impossible premise, his account made it appear plausible.

His collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda.

Woolsey's intelligence was "sexed up" to sound credible. Now we know it was false. All of it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In the consistency and common source of this duplicity lies the perilous future of Israel and its fast-shrinking legitimacy as a nation state.

The fast-growing worldwide revulsion at all things Israeli suggests that this latest fraud may yet fail-though not for lack of trying.

The Liars Return

Goldberg is back with another round of "reporting" in the best Goebbels tradition. Woolsey helped hyped his 2002 New Yorker essay, calling it a "blockbuster." That it was.

Woolsey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle lobbied the Bush White House in May 2004 to retain Iraqi liar Ahmed Chalabi as the U.S.-favored leader for Iraq. Perle took two decades to develop Chalabi as an Israeli asset-at U.S. taxpayer expense.

New York Times "reporter" Judith Miller featured as facts Chalabi's fabrications about Iraqi WMD. Meanwhile, Perle took over as chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board in 2001-on which Woolsey and Gingrich served. None dare call this treason-yet.

Goldberg is now making the Evil Doer case for Iran. Writing in the July 22, 2008 issue of The Atlantic, he argues the Israeli case for bombing Iran and urges that the U.S. again join the fray.

Woolsey, Gingrich and Perle are pushing the same agenda from the periphery. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, among Chalabi's earliest Congressional supporters, are again vocal in their support of expanding the war.

If the U.S. had an honest media, Goldberg would be revealed as a fraud and his cohorts reviled as traitors. Instead he was interviewed on MSNBC by Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, and lionized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer who served 17 years with The Jerusalem Post.

The probability of Goldberg conceding that he served in the Israeli army is as likely as Blitzer conceding that he wrote a sympathetic book on Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard.

Our Faithful Ally

The March 2008 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. No credible evidence has been offered that Tehran intends to enrich uranium beyond what is required for fuel and medical applications.

In a step scheduled for August 21, Russia will assist Iran in shifting 64 tons of low-enriched uranium from a storage site to the reactor chamber as the first of three steps in the long-delayed start-up of Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

If all goes according to plan, Iran's reactor will begin generating electricity in three to four months. As a condition of completing and fueling the plant, Russia insists that Iran return spent fuel so that the plutonium cannot be extracted for use in developing atomic weapons.

To date, the Iranians have produced only 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium. Moscow sees this next step as essential to bringing Tehran's nuclear activities under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What's the Israeli strategy for IAEA compliance? Bomb Iran. What's the U.S. strategy? Follow the lead of our faithful and reliable ally.

Tel Aviv portrays the Iranian reactor as an "existential threat" and a sure sign of a pending Holocaust. How Likud Party leaders divine that outcome remains obscure. But never mind that minor detail, mainstream American media can fill in the "never again" blanks.

It was during just such a development stage of an Iraqi nuclear facility that Israel attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant at Osirak as it neared completion in June 1981.

Thus the concern that Tel Aviv may attack the Bushehr facility before the reactor rods are lowered into the reactor core. Any attack after the chain reaction begins is certain to release radiation into the atmosphere.

The Perils of Pending Transparency

Other key factors are also driving Israel in this direction, including the need for a diversion.

Tel Aviv is now implicated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The massive bomb blast left a crater 10 feet deep and 50 feet across. To date, Syria has been blamed for Hariri's murder, along with Hezbollah.

The ensuing instability was cited by Israel as a rationale for its 2006 invasion of Lebanon with the U.S.-per usual-widely portrayed as guilty by association.

A UN tribunal is now turning the spotlight on Israel's role. The tribunal will add fuel to the ongoing inquiry into the suspicious death of UK nuclear weapons inspector David Kelly who complained of the "sexed up" intelligence on WMD that induced the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, ridicule is being heaped on the report of the 911 Commission for its glaring omissions, including its failure to identify U.S.-Israeli relations as a key motivation.

Fast-emerging developments on other fronts also spell trouble for Israel.

Even now, no one dares mention the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 which was not hit by hijacked airliners. No one dares repeat the comment of leaseholder Leonard Silverstein on a PBS interview when he conceded the building was "pulled."

Means, Motive & Opportunity

When waging Information Age warfare, false beliefs are routinely deployed as a form of weaponry to displace facts. That displacement process is much easier when the psy-ops includes an emotionally wrenching component.

Thus the necessity that those selling us an agenda wield influence in mainstream media.

With Israeli dominance also reaching deep into official decision-making, those in our military who question today's Zionist narrative are routinely cashiered out of the service.

So who remains to counter the disinformation that passes for intelligence? In our tattered system of self-governance, who can deploy the facts required to displace the fictions foisted on us by Woolsey & Co.?

Answer: you and those with whom you share these facts and analyses.

The solution to this corruption requires people willing to tell the truth about what is being done to our country-and by whom. Make it personal-because it is. What you see chronicled in these accounts is how organized crime succeeds in plain sight.

In a system of governance dependent on facts for our informed consent, mainstream media was an early target of those perpetrating these ongoing psy-ops. Their success traces to domination of this key industry by supporters of this purported ally.

The facts are clear and the case is now compelling: Israel is not an ally but a reliable enemy.

Goldberg, Woolsey, Perle, Gingrich, McCain, Lieberman, Miller, Blitzer, Mitchell & Co. comprise an army of agents and assets enabled by an industry taken hostage by those destabilizing the U.S. from within.

Should the Zionist state again approach us for assistance-of any sort, the response must be clear and unequivocal: never again.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

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By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.

Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the "global war on terror" which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.

On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.

According to the bill he recently proposed in the Senate, the entire global internet is to be claimed as a "national asset" of the United States. If Congress passes the bill, the US President would be given the power to "kill" the internet in the event of a "national cyber-emergency." Supporters of the legislation say this is necessary to prevent a "cyber 9/11" - yet another myth from the fearmongers who brought us tales of "Iraqi WMD" and "Iranian nukes."

Lieberman's concerns about the internet are not new. The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, released a report in 2008 titled "Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat." The report claimed that groups like al-Qaeda use the internet to indoctrinate and recruit members, and to communicate with each other.

Immediately after the report was published, Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of You Tube, to "immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations." That might sound like a reasonable request. However, as far as Lieberman is concerned, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are terrorist organizations.

It's hardly surprising that Lieberman's views on what constitute terrorism parallel those of Tel Aviv. As Mark Vogel, chairman of the largest pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) in the United States, once said: "Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions ... is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman."

Lieberman has been well-rewarded for his patriotism – to another country. In the past six years, he has been the Senate's top recipient of political contributions from pro-Israel PACs with a staggering $1,226,956.

But what is it that bothers Lieberman so much about the internet? Could it be that it allows ordinary Americans access to facts which reveal exactly what kind of "friend" Israel has been to its overgenerous benefactor? Facts which they have been denied by the pro-Israel mainstream media.

How much faith would American voters have in the likes of Lieberman, who claims that the Jewish state is their greatest ally, if they knew that Israeli agents planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954 in an attempt to undermine relations between Nasser and the United States; that Israel murdered 34 American servicemen in a deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967; that Israeli espionage, most notably Jonathan Pollard's spying, has done tremendous damage to American interests; that five Mossad agents were filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001; that Tel Aviv and its accomplices in Washington were the source of the false pre-war intelligence on Iraq; and about countless other examples of treachery?

In his latest attempt to censor the internet, does Lieberman really want to protect the American people from imaginary cyber-terrorists? Or is he just trying to protect his treasonous cronies from the American people?

*Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

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By Maidhc Ó Cathail* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This month marks the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Despite the passage of time, there is still much confusion, some of it deliberate, about why America made that fateful decision. The following questions are intended to clarify who's to blame for the Iraq war.

1. Ahmed Chalabi, the source of much of the false "intelligence" about Iraqi WMD, was introduced to his biggest boosters Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz by their mentor, a University of Chicago professor who had known the Iraqi con man since the 1960s. Who was this influential Cold War hawk who has an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference centre named in his honour?

2. In 1982, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s" appeared in Kivunim, a journal published by the World Zionist Organization, which stated: "Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel." Who wrote this seminal article?

3. "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a report prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, recommended "removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq-an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right." Which then member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board was the study group leader?

4. A November 1997 Weekly Standard editorial titled "Saddam Must Go" stated: "We know it seems unthinkable to propose another ground attack to take Baghdad. But it's time to start thinking the unthinkable." The following year, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, published a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a "hazard" to "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil." The co-founders of PNAC were also the authors of the "Saddam Must Go" editorial. Who are they?

5. In Tyranny's Ally: America's Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, published by AEI Press in 1999, he argued that Clinton policies in Iraq were failing to contain the country and proposed that the US use its military to redraw the map of the Middle East. Who was this Mideast adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003 to mid-2007?

6. On September 15, 2001 at Camp David, the Deputy Defense Secretary attempted to justify a US attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan because it was "doable."
In the lead-up to the war, he said that it was "wildly off the mark" to think hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to pacify a postwar Iraq; that the Iraqis "are going to welcome us as liberators"; and that "it is just wrong" to assume that the United States would have to fund the Iraq war. Who is this chief architect of the Iraq war?

7. On September 23, 2001, which US senator, who had pushed for the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that there was evidence that "suggests Saddam Hussein may have had contact with bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network, perhaps [was] even involved in the September 11 attack"?

8. A November 12, 2001 New York Times editorial called an alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague an "undisputed fact"? Who was the columnist, celebrated for his linguistic prowess, who was sloppy in his use of language here?

9. A November 20, 2001 Wall Street Journal op-ed argued that the US should continue to target regimes that sponsor terrorism, claiming, "Iraq is the obvious candidate, having not only helped al Qaeda, but attacked Americans directly (including an assassination attempt against the first President Bush) and developed weapons of mass destruction." Who is the professor of strategic studies at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University who made these spurious claims?

10. George W. Bush's January 2002 State of the Union address described Iraq as part of an "axis of evil." Who was Bush's Canadian-born speechwriter who coined the provocative phrase?

11. "Yet whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power"? Who is the longtime editor of Commentary magazine who made this assertion in a February 2002 article titled "How to win World War IV"?

12. Which Pentagon Defense Policy Board member and PNAC signatory wrote in the Washington Post on February 13, 2002, "I believe that demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk"?

13. "If we win the war, we are in control of Iraq, it is the single largest source of oil in the world. We will have a bonanza, a financial one, at the other end, if the war is successful." Who is the psychiatrist-turned- Washington Post columnist who tempted Americans with this illusory carrot on August 3, 2002?

14. In a September 20, 2002 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "The Case of Toppling Saddam," which current national leader claimed that Saddam Hussein could be hiding nuclear material "in centrifuges the size of washing machines" throughout the country?

15. "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990-it's the threat against Israel." Despite this candid admission to a foreign policy conference at the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, he authored the National Security Strategy of September 2002, which provided the justification for a preemptive war against Iraq. Who was this member of President Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board?

16. According to a December 7, 2002 New York Times article, during Secretary of State Powell's efforts to negotiate a resolution on Iraq at the United Nations, this Iran-Contra conspirator's role was "to make sure that Secretary Powell did not make too many concessions to the Europeans on the resolution's wording, pressing a hard-line view." Who was this senior director of Near East and North African affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration?

17. Who was Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, until he was indicted for lying to federal investigators in the Valerie Plame case, who drafted Colin Powell's fraudulent February 5, 2003 UN speech?

18. According to Julian Borger's July 17, 2003 Guardian article titled "The spies who pushed for war," the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) "forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel" to provide the Bush administration with alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq. Who was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy who headed the OSP?

19. Which British-born professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, whose 1990 essay "The Roots of Muslim Rage" introduced the dubious concept of a "Clash of Civilizations," has been called "perhaps the most significant intellectual influence behind the invasion of Iraq"?

20. Apart from their key role in taking America to war against Iraq, what do the answers to questions 1 to 19 all have in common?

Answers: 1. Albert Wohlstetter 2. Oded Yinon 3. Richard Perle 4. William Kristol and Robert Kagan 5. David Wurmser 6. Paul Wolfowitz 7. Joseph Lieberman 8. William Safire 9. Eliot Cohen 10. David Frum 11. Norman Podhoretz 12. Kenneth Adelman 13. Charles Krauthammer 14. Benjamin Netanyahu 15. Philip Zelikow 16. Elliott Abrams 17. Lewis "Scooter" Libby 18. Douglas Feith 19. Bernard Lewis 20. They are all Jewish Zionists.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Source: Islam Times

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By Franklin Lamb* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

John McCain dropped in on Beirut last weekend en route to Israel to join fellow US Senator Joe Lieberman in agreeing with their hosts that, a just as he told them during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama was real bad for Israel. McCain, fundraising for his 2010 reelection bid, emphasized that the Obama administration's hint that the US might just possibly consider withholding a few largely superfluous loan guarantees to pressure Israel on settlements was a joke. Their hosts were likely pleased with assurances that no way would John and Joe allow Congress or Obama to pressure Israel.

In Israel, McCain may still have been smarting from the earlier drubbing he and other US officials received from their usual self-effacing Lebanese hosts. His stopover in Lebanon was to be lite fare. Extending "Congratulations on forming the new Lebanese government, even though our government has serious doubts about those we know hold the real power"; better weather here in Beirut than in Washington DC, plus three quick meetings- but for sure, no heavy lifting.

In the meetings he may have planned to repeat the standard line, well known here: "the United States of America respects the independence, freedom and sovereignty of Lebanon and wishes to help it defeat terrorism, extremism and recover control of its weapons and extend the state's authority over the whole country (not to be confused with the Lebanese territory of Shebaa Farms, Kafar Shouba and the north part of Ghajar Village still occupied by Israel which was likely not on John's agenda). McCain, like most visitors from Washington these days did not have to prepare much for his brief sessions. And anyhow, if more pledges were needed he could just add the pro forma: "The United States favors the full implementation of UNSC resolutions 1559 (no longer even relevant) and 1701, (violated nearly daily by Israel as is 425 among others) and believes foreign powers should not interfere in Lebanon's internal affairs" etc.

But Mcain's trip script got messed up bad and he fumed on departure from Lebanon according to witnesses.

From repeated TV news video clips and a report by someone present at two of McCain's meetings, the Lebanon leg of his trip wasn't much fun. Beirut media coverage revealed that "Arizona's last line of defense" (against Obama) as one Phoenix bill board refers to McCain, was uncomfortable, squinting, red faced and glaring during his meetings at the American Ambassador who continually smiled and nodded irrespective of the comments made by anyone present.

McCain reportedly felt poorly briefed for his meeting with Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman and initially had no idea what Suleiman was talking about when he brought up the subject of H.R. 2278. McCain appeared puzzled as Suleiman persisted and emphasized that Lebanon rejected the AIPAC initiative that threatens Middle East Satellite Providers with yet another US Terrorism list. John asked how and Suleiman explained if they don't prevent the more than 400 TV Channels, including some in Lebanon, from "inciting violence against US citizens." One thing clear to the Senator was that President Suleiman and several Lebanese officials had done more homework than he had.

McCain was also advised in the clearest terms that Lebanon rejected the latest mega US terrorism list that includes more than 675 million Muslims and Arabs and lumps Lebanon with 13 other countries for 'intense screening'.

There were moments of silence that must have seemed more like minutes.

Suleiman: Looks grave and straight into McCain's eyes.

US Ambassador: Smiles and nods

McCain: Avoids eye contact with President Suleiman and glares at Michele, grits his teeth, squints, and gets red faced. Finally says, "We will look into it."

US Ambassador: Smiles and nods

Suleiman: Persists

The former General and Chief of the Lebanese Army and specialist in interrogations, pressed his American interlocutor. Still glaring, John says: "I believe some of the stations we prevented could have been stirring feelings of enmity to America and we have the right to stop them. However, we have to consider the issue further to avoid taking similar decisions regarding stations which did not voice hostility against us."

Meanwhile, McLain learned that as he was landing, Speaker of Parliament Nabeh Berri sent an urgent letter to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi protesting H.R. 2278 (which like virtually all AIPAC bills she had voted in favor of) in strong terms, warning that it "would be interpreted as hostile and that the bill breaches the sovereignty of the states broadcasting the penalized satellite content – including Lebanon – and complicates US-Lebanese relations." Describing H.R. 2278 as "derogative" to Lebanon's and other Arab countries' sovereignty Berri advised Pelosi that the bill "harms the principles of freedom of expression and civil rights, and leads to further complication in Lebanese-US relations…This bill represents bypassing the sovereign national laws of the targeted countries, among them Lebanon which is a free 'Hyde Park' for the Lebanese and Arab satellite 'public opinion' media channels," Berri's letter added. "All of the (foreign) media channels broadcasting from Lebanon know and appreciate Lebanon's keenness on building the best relations with the United States which hosts a major Lebanese community."

Clearly, the arriving Americans were not expecting such a strong and united response and some of their staff wondered what was going on. They were informed that in Lebanon and the Middle East and among many international civil liberty advocates the two recent US actions were viewed as aggressive racial and religious profiling and constituted an unwarranted attack on free speech and the international media including more than 400 channels in 19 countries.

For the approximately 15 million citizens of Lebanon, (all but between three and four million of whom have left for various reasons), with the highest percentage than any country residing in the United States, their President made them proud by conveying unequivocally their dismay and demanding that Washington backtrack on its decision to ban certain middle east television channels and its profiling of Lebanese for another T list.

Senator McCain was not only US official to hear from Lebanese officials. Others were and are being collared on arrival:

Earlier on the same day, Suleiman expressed Lebanon's concern during talks with visiting US congressman Alcee Hastings, co-chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, telling him that "Lebanon enjoys a climate of stability and has shown that it is capable of combating terrorism." Suleiman stressed the need to find a just solution for the Palestinian refugee issue, so as to guarantee their right of return while underscoring the need to force Israel to implement Resolution 1701 and withdraw from all occupied Lebanese territory.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Ali Shami also expressed his dismay during and following his meeting with Hastings stating that the strict US 'intense screening" measures "disregarded the individuals' rights and the human dignity of passengers."

Others receiving similar treatment on arrival included:

* U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, David Johnson arrived in Beirut on 1/13/10 and was similarly questioned the Lebanese Internal Security Forces chief, Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi.

* U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones who arrived on 1/15/10 and met with Michel Suleiman and other top Lebanese officials heard their rejection of the 14 country mega T list with its planned intense screening of Lebanese citizens. Also raised was H.R. 2278 which they appeared not to know is aimed at Lebanese and Middle East TV channels.

* On 1/17/10 US Mideast Envoy George Mitchell is expected to experience the same Lebanese reaction to the widely perceived hostile measures.

Lebanon presents a united front

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri appeared to agree with former FBI agent Michael German, currently national security policy counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington that singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced screening "is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American ( and Arab and Muslim ) values. Hariri, objected that Lebanese were part of the new list of 14 'terrorist leaning" countries "We are not advocates of war, but advocates of the return of our stolen land…"Defending Lebanon is not an act of terrorism, but attacks on Lebanon are terrorism itself... We have to stand shoulder by shoulder against the enemy's plans... We have to stop Israel."

Former chemistry professor Naim Qassim, recently reelected by Hezbollah's General Conference as Deputy Secretary General of that Party praised the stances of President Suleiman, Speaker Berri, and PM Saad Hariri against the latest U.S. measures, including the ban on Al Manar TV broadcasting via Arab satellites.

Pro US March 14 member and Lebanese Information Minister Tareq Mitri told reporters. "What is under question is the fact that citizens of different countries are singled out in a discriminatory fashion."

Lebanon's ambassador to Washington has been tasked to monitor Congressional action regarding H.R. 2278 and the Parliament's Media committee also has met to discuss the issue. The Media committee has urged Lebanon to continue its strong commitment to safeguard the freedom of Lebanon's media.

On 1/15/10 the 22 country Arab League will convene a meeting of its Information Ministers in Cairo to formulate an official Arab League response.

Calls continues for the 57 country Organization of the Islamic Conference located in Saudi Arabia to take action both on H.R. 2278 and the new 14 country mega T list.

Syria backs Lebanon

In Syria, the largest news agency said Washington's top diplomat in Damascus was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told the new measures including full-body pat-downs and full-body scanning constituted "unfriendly behavior." No Syrian citizen was ever involved in terror attacks against the U.S., the agency noted. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also informed the American diplomat that Damascus could be left with no choice but to introduce similar measures against U.S. citizens.

Is Michele next?

One uncertainly looming over the American Embassy in Awkar this weekend is whether another shoe will be thrown and whether an aide memoire might arrive from the Lebanese Foreign ministry to summon the American ambassador for serious consultation and questioning about these perceived anti-Arab and anti-Muslim initiatives.

So far her smiles and nodding have achieved wonders for America's pretty nervous (pretty and nervous) Ambassador but inquiring Lebanese minds wonder if her luck will hold.

Can she even comply given the recent State Department order issued by Nicole Shampaine that no US officials meeting with Hezbollah 'people' reported in Counterpunch last month? An Embassy source reports accurately that the US Ambassador has already met the Hezbollah led Resistance supporter, FM Ali Shami, despite Nicole's policy statement and will do so again if summoned.

Middle East countries are not the only ones concerned with the recent reaction security meanders that have created a terrorist watch-listing system which according the ACLU's Mike German is fundamentally ridiculous," and creating "tremendous false positives," a fact that makes using the entire list as a tool to keep terrorists off of airplanes problematic and in which political considerations trump sustainable and effective systems.

The US Transportation Safety Authority, which has ordered another 300 Full Body Scanners for 2011, is showing a video to passengers that declares "the system of Full Body Scanners has no way to save, transmit or print the image" is being questioned by experts such as The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Director, Marc Rotenberg told a news conference this week that "I don't think the TSA has been forthcoming with the American public about the true capability of these devices. They've done a bunch of very slick promotions where they show people - including journalists - going through the devices. And then they reassure people, based on the images that have been produced, that there are not any privacy concerns."

EPIC is concerned with cases like that of little Mickey Hicks, an 8 year old cub scout from New Jersey who since he was two years old gets patted down, delayed, and his family humiliated because his name is apparently similar to someone on a T list. Efforts by Mikeys mother Najlah, to get him off a T list have not succeeded according to the NYT of 1/14/10.

Not everyone is as nonchalant as former political advisor to then Israeli Prime Minister candidate Ehud Barak, and Louisiana political operative James Carville who speaking on The Tony Kornheiser Show 1/9/09 unzipped, his vision for airport security by telling Tony proudly that the TSA can use its FBS machines "to measure my penis which is usually up in the air, anyhow." James experienced wife Mary said she was shocked and then rudely advised friends, "Trust me, it not all that!"

It is the duty of every patriotic American, mindful of the fuller text of Stephen Decatur's toast off the shores of Libya more than 200 years ago of "My country right or wrong" as altered by Union Army General Carl Shurz to: My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." to work for change in our Middle East policy. In this spirit and to help assure that visiting US officials are not caught flat footed again next week, the following questions are offered as examples of those which will likely be asked in the coming weeks by each of the 19 countries targeted by H.R. 2278 as well as the other 13 Christmas Day mega T list countries.

1. What evidence does the US government have that any Lebanese TV channel has "incited violence against American citizens" in light of the fact that the video clips offered to the US Congress by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) have been shown to spliced, photo shopped and even show no "incitement to violence against American citizens."

2. Will the State Department make available to the public the results of a ten year survey of Lebanese TV stations documenting all claimed instances of "incitement to violence against American citizens?

3. With respect to the more than 400 Middle East TV Channels potentially threatened with closure by H.R. 2278, will the US Embassy provide specific instances of programming that "incites violence against American citizens?

Meanwhile, apparently inspired by H.R. 2278, Rep. J. Gresham Barrett, a Republican Congressman from South Carolina's 3rd District plans on reintroducing the STEP Act which failed back in 2003 when first offered. Initiated by AIPAC and pushed hard by the US Israel lobby, this legislation would bar citizens of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States.

It would also deport from the US within 60 days, all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas and tourist visas. Barrett wants his staff and Homeland Security to prepare an up to the minute list of Iranians in the US.

Meeting recently with a group of South Carolina students who came to discuss the desperate humanitarian crisis in Gaza on the first anniversary of Israel's invasion, Barrett offered his views on the siege: "I believe sealing the borders must remain in place as part of the Global War on Terrorism and I support the right of Israel to defend itself and its citizens against attack. Hamas has violated a ceasefire agreement by launching daily rocket attacks into the state of Israel, wounding and killing numerous Israelis. Hamas should end its attacks and re-enter into a ceasefire agreement."

* Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

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Janet Napolitano, Secretary Homeland Security is greeted on Capitol Hill by Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Was Fort Hood really the target of a terrorist attack? The first clue to the real culprit emerged when Senator Joe Lieberman sought to blame this mass murder on the U.S. military. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, he promised hearings on how the Pentagon protects its personnel from domestic terrorists.

Will Lieberman, an avowed Zionist, use this incident to insist that the U.S. do more to protect Jewish nationalists? More importantly, what do his concerns mean for homeland security?

Joe Lieberman has an ally in Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security. In April, this former Arizona governor warned about potential terrorism from U.S. troops returning from deployment in the Middle East. Though roundly attacked, she defended her position, calling it an "assessment not an accusation."

When Army Major Nidal Hasan killed U.S. troops on the nation's largest military base, was this evidence of "militant Islam"? Or did this military psychiatrist snap under pressure while treating returning vets on a base averaging ten suicides a month? Is there an undisclosed agenda behind those seeking to portray this act as the work of "Islamo fascists"?

To answer these questions requires a grasp of how "assets" are deployed by those skilled at waging war by way of deception. An asset is someone who has been profiled in sufficient depth that-when placed in a pre-staged time, place and circumstance-the person can be relied on to behave consistent with their profile.

Best Story Wins

Since the end of the Cold War, the predominant geopolitical narrative has been The Clash of Civilizations and its military counterpart: The Global War on Terrorism. How better to advance that storyline than to kill American soldiers even before they leave the U.S.? What's the motive?

Imagine if the intelligence that induced the U.S. to war was proven "fixed" around a preset goal. What if the common source of that treachery is poised to become transparent? If you were complicit in this deception (an act of treason), how would you obscure those facts? How would you sustain a "Muslim terrorist" narrative once the intelligence "facts" are exposed as pre-staged fictions meant to advance an undisclosed Israeli agenda?

For those marketing The Clash premise, Dr. Hasan's psychotic break was a blessing. At Family Security Matters, President Carol Taber describes this incident as "the Ft. Hood terrorist attack" by an "Islamist gunman." Editor Pam Meister promotes "the shocking TRUTH (sic) behind these attacks so that we might ward off those yet to come." Executive Vice-President Linda Cohen, who also serves as a trustee of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), offers advice certain to appeal to Lieberman and Napolitano:

"No one is safe now. Not you, not the military, not your children, not office workers nor subway riders, nor anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Is there a precedent for combining aberrant behavior and a mass murder to advance a preset agenda? Do you recall the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C. in October 2002?

Those murders commenced one day before debate began on Senate Resolution 46 proposed by Joe Lieberman to authorize the use of U.S. forces in Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, Lieberman and Arizona Senator John McCain urged that the U.S. target not Al Qaeda but Iraq.

The nation's capital became a city under siege when those attacks created insecurity and heightened anxiety as serial murders left ten dead and three wounded over a 10-day period. Those random shootings transformed the terror of 9-11 into a personal reality for Washington residents while Lieberman deployed phony intelligence to promote the invasion of a nation that had no hand in the mass murder of 9-11.

Assets and Sayanim

Once again: assets are profiled personalities catalyzed to act out known dysfunctions in ways that are advantageous based on the time, place and circumstances of their behavior. The totality of the facts suggests that Dr. Nidal Hasan may well have been such an asset.

Assets are typically identified, profiled and developed over lengthy periods of time. Their potential to act out a known personality disorder is held in reserve in the same way that a military commander holds troops in reserve for deployment at an opportune time.

How is an asset developed in plain sight and then tasked at the right moment? Only a careful investigation can identify those influences particular to Dr. Hasan, including what decisions led to his transfer to Ft. Hood and the circumstances there that triggered his behavior.

News reports to date are consistent with this analysis. For instance, his name appears as a participant for public briefings at the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. As a registrant in the Obama presidential transition task force ("Thinking Anew-Security Priorities for the Next Administration"), he would have interacted with a team of nine "task force briefers." Judging from their surnames, at least seven were Ashkenazim.
As a combat-stress psychiatrist, Dr. Hasan dealt daily with troubled vets at Walter Reed Hospital where the most grievously wounded are sent to recover, many of them amputees, disfigured or otherwise handicapped for life. While coping with that vicarious trauma, he was taunted for his Muslim beliefs and harassed for his Middle Eastern heritage even though he was born, raised and educated in the U.S..

Despite clear indications of internal turmoil, including repeated attempts to resign his commission, he was dispatched to a post known for its huge population of combat-stressed vets. He arrived anticipating orders to deploy to Afghanistan, realizing his worst nightmare. Meanwhile a commander-in-chief promising change made matters even worse in the region.

Israeli psy-ops rely on an extensive cadre of sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers) who are shielded from legal culpability by being told only enough to perform their narrow role when tasked to assist with operations on an as-needed basis. Otherwise, they gather and report useful intelligence. Thus the presence of sayanim throughout the U.S. government. A sayan may well have identified Nidal Hasan as a potential asset who could be developed and, as here, deployed.

At What Cost?

With evidence emerging that Israelis and pro-Israelis were the source of the sham intelligence that induced the U.S. to war, those responsible are scrambling to cover their tracks. Americans will soon realize what the facts confirm: Jewish nationalists deceived the U.S. in order to deploy our military to pursue Israel's expansionist agenda for the Middle East.
Americans will soon awaken to the cost of this entangled alliance in blood and treasure. U.S. deaths in Iraq could top 4,300 this month with more than one million Iraqis dead from the war and from violence unleashed by those who manipulated this alliance to induce an invasion.

That brings us back to the uncomfortable but essential question: Was Homeland Security created to protect the U.S.? Or was it created to protect those who deceived the U.S.? Was this incident another example of the murderous misdirection deployed to pit Americans against Muslims to advance unacknowledged Zionist goals?

By shifting blame to the military, do Lieberman and Napolitano intend to use federal law enforcement to contain the outraged reaction of an informed public and an awakened military? Was Dr. Nidal Hasan a terrorist? Or was he a troubled pawn in an ongoing psy-ops campaign meant to revive a narrative that-like the fixed intelligence-was losing credibility?

Both the false intelligence and the anti-Muslim narrative feature a theme of fomenting hate and intolerance. On October 28th, President Obama signed into law ADL's model hate crime legislation. Will that federal law now be deployed by Homeland Security to silence those who make transparent the common source of this deception?
How much longer before a long-deceived public-both in the U.S. and abroad-takes the steps required to ensure that never again is duplicity allowed to operate on such a scale?

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide; an adviser to policy-makers worldwide; former counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee; and author of numerous articles and books including his latest book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com

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