THE ISRAEL LOBBY: TARGETING DEMOCRATS FOR ELECTION DAY DEFEAT

The fury of the “pro-Israel” lobby lately has truly been something to behold.

By MJ Rosenberg — www.informationclearinghouse

It has abandoned bipartisanship by setting up front organizations like the so-called Emergency Committee for Israel, which is running ads across the country calling on voters to defeat Democratic members of the House and Senate for signing a letter urging President Obama to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

With all the problems average Americans are facing, the lobby is so out-of-touch that it thinks that hard-hit Pennsylvanian voters (the ads runs most often in the Keystone State) will actually cast their votes based on the lobby’s litmus test of who is and who isn’t hawkish enough on Israel.

Then there is the American Jewish Committee, which has now issued an unusual second political poll this year. The first, issued in March, was its traditional annual poll of American Jewish opinion on matters foreign and domestic.

This second poll, issued just before the congressional elections, is more limited and clearly is designed to demonstrate that Jewish voters are deserting President Obama because of his efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the peace table. (The AJC press release carries the title: “AJC Poll Shows Jewish Disapproval of President Obama Rising.”)

Actually, the poll’s intent is to create the shift it claims to portray, a shift that is, in fact, not happening because, as Republican Whip Eric Cantor said on October 2, American Jews are voting Democratic, as they always have, because “Jews are prone to want to help the underdog.”

But not the American Jewish Committee, the most established and establishment of lobby organizations which, under its current leadership, is a bastion of neoconservative war-mongering and has put its once-respected polls to the service of the GOP.

The good news is that Eric Cantor is right: American Jews (not him) are liberals and Democrats. But the “pro-Israel” establishment just follows lockstep behind Prime Minister Netanyahu who wants Republicans to win in November (he has a history of supporting the GOP) and President Obama gone in 2012.

One, they are tired of even Obama’s timid pressure on settlements and (2) they want a President who will give Israel permission to bomb Iran. George W. Bush said “no” to that scheme as has Obama. But President Palin or Huckabee? They know that they would say “bombs away” in a heartbeat.

That is why they are running these ads. That is why the American Jewish Committee has become a Republican cutout. It’s all about the Middle East: preventing Israel from achieving peace with its neighbors and preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, not through diplomacy but war.

And check out this ad the “Emergency Committee for Israel” is running against a Democratic Congressman in Connecticut. (They are using the same ad against a host of Democrats). Happily, it won’t work. But it does demonstrate what this game is all about. And it’s not jobs, jobs, jobs.

MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, Media Matters Action Network. MJ Rosenberg, Senior Foreign Policy Fellow, Media Matters Action Network. Since 1998, M.J. Rosenberg has been the Director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum (IPF). He heads the organization’s Washington, D.C. office and writes IPF FRIDAY, a widely-circulated weekly opinion column which focuses upon U.S. Middle East policy and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Related Video:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCxYicxTow

Related post:

• Stephen Walt: Bill Kristol’s ‘Emergency Committee?’ Give me a break
• Debbie Menon: End Israel Lobby’s Pervasive and Damaging Influence in US Politics
• Maidhc O Cathail: The Source of America’s Wars – Kristol Clear [VIDEO]

• ME, GENERAL PETRAEUS & THE ISRAEL LOBBY

Debbie Menon

Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. Her main focus are the US-Mid- East Conflicts. Her writing has been featured in many print and online publications.

Her writing reflects the incredible resilience, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, who are now facing the prospect of a final round of ethnic cleansing. She is committed to exposing Israel’s Lobbies’ control of ‘U.S. Middle East Policy. Control’ which amounts to treason by the Zionist lobbies in America and its stooges in Congress, and that guarantees there can never be a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only catastrophe for all, in the region and the world.

Her mission is to inform and educate internet viewers seeking unfiltered information about real events on issues of the US/Middle East conflicts that are unreported, underreported, or distorted in the American media. PS: For those of her detractors that think she is being selective and even “one-sided,” tough, that is the point of her work, to present an alternative view and interpretation of the US-Israel-Middle East conflict, that has been completely ignored in mainstream discourse.

The purpose is to look at the current reality from a different and critical perspective, not to simply rehash the pro-US/Israel perspective, smoke and mirrors that has been allowed to utterly and completely dominate Mainstream discourse.