"A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value."
Butt Buddies fer life?
"No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of."
Vindictive ungrateful SOB's, enh?
The following for parker & lasersailor:
As the Forward article points out, the majority of Jewish Americans don't share AIPAC's ultra-hawkishness. "Like many other American Jewish organizations, it supported the Iraq war. But 70% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according to a poll commission by the American Jewish Committee at the end of 2005."
As the Mearsheimer-Walt study makes evident, such is the lopsided influence of AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobbies--their ability to control the terms of the debate, and militarize every argument--that liberal sentiments and convictions of the majority of the Jewish community become irrelevant. Seizing at a ray of optimism, the authors conclude, "Although the Lobby remains a powerful force, the adverse effects of its influence are increasingly difficult to hide. Powerful states can maintain flawed policies for quite some time, but reality cannot be ignored for ever."
Such innocence. Of course it can. This is America, after all, and in Bush Country reality can be put on hold indefinitely, until the next major distraction is staged.
Gents, we're being carefully lubed, then systematicaly screwed. By an 'Ally'.
Such a surprise.
