The Israel/India Alliance

Below is the fourth installment in a 5-part series on Pakistan by Jeff Gates, author of Guilt By Association.

In April 2009, Tel Aviv signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide New Delhi an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor. That agreement confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….”

In May 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region by giving India air dominance over Pakistan.

Israel has overtaken Russia as India’s chief arms supplier as New Delhi announced $50 billion in defense modernization outlays from 2007 to 2012. The fast emerging fact patterns suggest there is far more implied for Pakistan in this “special defense relationship” than meets the eye.

In August 2008, Ashkenazim General David Kezerashvili returned to his native Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Tel Aviv-provided arms and military training provided by Israel Defense Forces. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the six-decade Israel-Palestine conflict.

Little was reported in mainstream media about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on to Eurasia with Tel Aviv a profit-extracting intermediary undercutting Russia’s oil industry. Nor did mainstream media report on the self-reinforcing nature of serial well-timed crises that emerged in a compressed time frame.

For example, on August 7, 2008, the ruling coalition led by Asif Ali Zarderi called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament on president Pervez Musharraf just as he was scheduled to depart for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia while the heads of state of both Russia and the U.S. were in Beijing.

What other crises were then unfolding? But for pro-Israeli influence inside the U.S. government, would our State Department have backed the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production involving Karzai’s brother? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel’s fabled game theory war-planners who are infamous for disabling their targets from the inside out?

Three months after the crisis in Georgia, a terrorist attack in Mumbai renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the Mumbai attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.”

See: Israel and 9-11

By early December, Jewish journalists were arguing that Israel must “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.” In the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security continued its policy of dispersing U.S. taxpayer funds to protect synagogues and Jewish community centers.

Pre-Staged Plausibility

Soon after “India’s 9-11” was found to include personnel recruited from Pakistan’s western tribal region, President Zardari announced an agreement with Taliban tribal chiefs to allow Sharia law to govern a swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda members reportedly reside.

The perception of Pakistani cooperation with “Islamic extremists” created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. That perceived threat was widely reported by mainstream media as proof of the imminent perils of “militant Islam.”

With religious extremists portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear-Islamic Tehran posed an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel’s election of an ultra-nationalist governing coalition led by Benjamin Netanyahu further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay ensured more extremism and gained more media traction for those marketing a perpetual “global war on terrorism” and its thematic counterpart, The Clash of Civilizations. After the assault in Mumbai, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.” By its exclusion, Pakistan was implicated as harboring terrorists.

Few Americans understand that Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran’s Shi’a, abhors theocratic rule and the religious extremism common to Al Qaeda as well as the assorted strains of fundamentalism found among the Taliban. Game theory war planning suggests that Pakistan, not India, was the target of India’s 9-11. As with our 9-11, the strategic objective was not the event itself but the anticipated reaction—and the reactions to that reaction.

Advised by legions of Ashkenazim, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s October 2009 mission to Pakistan was a diplomatic disaster. Right on cue, a terrorist attack in Peshwar killed dozens just as she arrived in Islamabad. Abrasive, arrogant and aloof, our top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that their nation is surrounded by hostile forces.

Clinton’s behavior fueled fears that the government of Pakistan is being set up for portrayal as a “failed state” by ultra-nationalist Jewish advisers to a nation—the U.S.—it has long considered a friend. When Barack Obama hosted the prime minister of India for his first state dinner, the anxiety level in Pakistan was heightened—particularly among those familiar with the dominance of Ashkenazi advisers in the Obama White House.

Societal Conflict—By Consensus

Meanwhile, India’s oligarchs continued to amass wealth and influence at a record pace as the caste system maintained its stranglehold on Hindu society. By 2007, India’s 40 billionaires had amassed a combined wealth of $351 billion, up from a combined wealth of $170 billion just since 2006. Though New Delhi cites the success of its high-tech sector and its “Bollywood” film industry as signs of a burgeoning middle class, the reality is far from reassuring.

As in Russia where the wealth from privatization migrated to a small cadre of dominantly Ashkenazi oligarchs, a similar oligarch-ization is ongoing in India. While maintaining a vast underclass of “untouchables” mired in grinding poverty, India’s policy making elite gravitated to an economic model that traces its U.S. roots to the University of Chicago where Barack Obama taught for 11 years while he was being groomed for political office.

The “Chicago Model” advances in plain sight behind an implied assumption that financial freedom is an appropriate proxy for personal freedom. Despite facts confirming that wealth and income are concentrating at record rates worldwide, this “consensus” model insists that nations vest their faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets.

As that finance-fixated mindset morphed into the “Washington” consensus, the U.S.-dominated international financial institutions imbedded this narrow worldview in law worldwide. As with ordinary Russians, ordinary Indians see their rising prosperity dominated by an caste oligarchy that steadily amasses outsized wealth along with disproportionate political influence.

As wealth concentrates, democracies become unworkable; as income concentrates, markets become unsustainable. Those profiled in Guilt By Association and the forthcoming Criminal State series are skilled in displacing facts with what targeted populations can be deceived to believe. Today’s money-myopic “consensus” traces its roots to a subculture within a subculture within a subculture whose belief in the unbridled pursuit of money preempts all other values. See online excerpts from Guilt By Association.

The India-Israel alliance has inflicted on the economy of India the same paradigm that is systematically disabling the U.S. economy—from the inside out—while creating record gaps in wealth and income. Pakistan has an opportunity to resist the embrace of this flawed model and, by so doing, inspire other nations—including the U.S.—to devise a sensible path forward.

Next in the series: Will Israel Assassinate Barack Obama?

An author, educator, attorney, merchant banker and adviser to policy-makers worldwide, Jeff Gates served as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87) prior to consulting 35 foreign governments. A Vietnam veteran, he is author of Guilt By Association, The Ownership Solution and Democracy at Risk. See www.criminalstate.com.

Jeff GatesAuthor, educator, attorney, merchant banker and adviser to policy-makers worldwide and U.S. Veteran

Jeff was counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance (1980-87) working for Democrat Russell Long, son of Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator Huey P. Long. Specialist in employee benefits law—pensions, 401(k) plans, stock options, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), et.al. Tax-qualified employee benefit plans accounted for $17 trillion in assets (April 2007) and more than half the funds in the hands of institutional investors. As of 2007, ESOPs were in place in 11,500 firms nationwide, covering 10% of the U.S. workforce and holding $800 billion in assets.

Law practice w/ former Senators Russell Long, Democrat of Louisiana and Paul Laxalt, Republican of Nevada, chairman of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns.

Counsel to Kelso & Company, Manhattan-based merchant bankers, completing $4 billion in transactions in 24-months, including the $3 billion leveraged buyout of American Standard, Inc., with employees and managers gaining a 33% stake in this multinational firm.

Author, Democracy at Risk – Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street  (April 2000).  Written as a sequel to The Ownership Solution –Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century (1998). Both books cited by presidential candidate Ralph Nader when branding U.S. Greens “the party of the new populism.” Guilt By Association – How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008).

Draftsman, 1986 Presidential Task Force Report on Project Economic Justice: “U.S. Efforts to Encourage Employee Stock Ownership Plans in Central America and the Caribbean.” Author, World Bank Discussion Paper: Employee Stock Ownership Plans: Objectives, Design Options, International Experience; DEMOS Argument Series (U.K.): Revolutionizing Share Ownership – The Stakeowner Economy; Tomorrow’s Capitalism (Pacific Institute), et. al.

Advisory work with 35-plus governments, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Guyana, Haiti, Hungary, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Puerto Rico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Trinidad, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the U.K. South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung announced August 2000 that the Korean edition of The Ownership Solution was his vacation-reading pick.

Contributor to trade, professional and popular publications worldwide: Financial Times, Japan Times, Financial Executive, M&A Today, Boston Review, Latin Finance, East/West Business Report, Society, Human Resource Management, Los Angeles Times, National Journal, World Times, The Humanist, Peace Review, Business Ethics, America, Tikkun, Whole Earth, Perspectives, Journal of Society of Organizational Learning, Journal of Organizational Change Management, et.al.

University of Virginia (B.A. in Honors Economics); J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of Law.  Partner, Washington office of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy. Faculty in the MBA program, Emory University.  Vietnam veteran (1LT, U.S. Army).  Native of Athens, Georgia.

He is also the author of the new book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.  His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century.

He resides in Tempe Arizona. [email protected]. Visit his web site, www.criminalstate.com

Jeff Gates

A Vietnam veteran, Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. He served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.

He is widely published in the trade, popular and academic press. His latest book is Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.

His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. Topical commentaries appear on the Criminal State website.