Zionist Things Fall Apart

…by Jonas E. Alexis

The Zionist fellowship is fading. Last February, the Jewish Daily Forward did not hesitate to say that Netanyahu “has badly damaged relations between the two countries and destroyed any semblance of trust between the leaders of two of the closest allies on earth.”[1]

AIPAC’s “credibility and political power,” the magazine continued to say, was “severely shaken.”[2]

Furthermore, Christian Zionists are also shifting their views and are slowly but surely beginning to realize that something is fundamentally and demonstrably wrong with the Israeli narrative. Quoting the Middle East Quarterly, Jon Basil Utley of the American Conservative writes,

“How quickly things change. The days of taking evangelical support for Israel for granted are over … anti-Israel Christians are penetrating the evangelical world at its soft underbelly, the millennial generation.

“Young believers are rebelling against … the excessive biblical literalism of their parents … as they strive to imitate Jesus’s stand with the oppressed and downtrodden.”[3]

Certainly this is good news, and it simply shows that the Zionist kingdom is not as invincible as people think it is. If you still think so, keep reading.

 At the end of last month, J. J. Goldberg of the Jewish Daily Forward lamented that “Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran Exaggerations [is] now clear for all to see.”[4] In simple terms, Netanyahu lied.

Netanyahu’s exaggeration and lies have become so clear to all that politicians and the Jewish community are now distancing themselves from this bad and sad and mad man. They knew that Netanyahu was going to lie to Congress—and he did not disappoint. Before his speech, Netanyahu would say to Likud party members,

“I am your rebel, your unjustly vilified martyr, your savior. I am your king – There is none else.”[5]

Well, the self-proclaimed “savior” has failed miserably during his speech, and the American people were not really impressed by his old propaganda. One writer declared that last Tuesday “mark a new low in the state of dysfunctional politics.”[6] U.S. Representative for Illinois’s 4^th congressional district Luis Gutierrez refused to watch Netanyahu’s speech.[7]

President Obama, who didn’t even bother to meet with the mad man from Tel Aviv—presumably because, well, he is “chickenshit”—said that Netanyahu had “nothing new” in his new political showdown.

Things got even worse. The University of Maryland’s Program of Public Policy conducted a poll and found out that 61 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats “favor an agreement” with Iran.[8]

Susan Rice added some spice in the political melting pot when she went to AIPAC and declared quite vigorously that Israel or AIPAC’s dream is “neither realistic nor achievable.”[9] And right after Netanyahu’s speech, one U. S. officials declared that “Netanyahu outlined a nuclear agreement that will never happen.”[10]

Flaming Zionist Thomas L. Friedman himself was not impressed with Netanyahu’s performance:

“I also have a problem with my own Congress howling in support of a flawed foreign leader trying to scuttle the negotiations by my own government before they’re done. Rubs me the wrong way.”[11]

 Here are some of the lies that Netanyahu perpetuated during his speech:

1. Iran supports a Shiite rampage in Iraq
2. Iran is responsible for thousands of U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan
3. Iran and the Islamic State militant group only disagree over who’s in charge
4. Iran will face no restriction at the end of a temporary nuclear deal
5. The deal as proposed could allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons within weeks.

Charlotte Alfred, who largely accepts the Zionist narrative, pointed out that not even one of those claims is true.[12] Other reporters such as Bradley Klapper said the same thing.

Put simply, Netanyahu’s appearance turned out to be a low blow for the Zionist movement. The show was so disappointing and disgusting that former Israeli justice minister Tzipi Livni tweeted, “Bibi is there speaking while we’re here winning.”[13] Both Tzipi and former Israeli finance minister Yair Lapid think that Netanyahu is literally ruining Israel’s relationship with the U.S.[14]

Eitan Cabel, a member of the Knesset for the Zionist Union party, literally called Netanyahu’s speech to Congress “political pyromania.”[15]

Prior to the speech, at least 200 members of the Commanders for Israel’s Security expressly declared that Netanyahu has gone to deep end.[16]

In the same vein, Nancy Pelosi declared that Netanyahu insulted America.[17] Listen to the Associated Press here:

“House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi politely stood and clapped when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the House chamber for his long-awaited, and highly controversial, speech to Congress. The longer he spoke, the less enthusiastic she got.

“At one point, when Netanyahu suggested his nation’s relationship with the United States should be above politics, Pelosi looked at her lap and shook her head. When he declared that, ‘if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand,’ Pelosi threw her hands up in exasperation.

“More than once, she turned to her deputy, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and appeared to vent. And even before Netanyahu had begun his ascent up the center aisle toward the exit, Pelosi pivoted and headed out a different door and into the Democratic cloakroom.”

Ran Paul, who attended the speech, seemed to have felt the same way.[18] It got worse:

“The major American broadcast networks declined to carry live Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress boycotted by many leading Democrats Tuesday, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC and CNN, did broadcast the address, along with CSPAN.

“The major networks, along with multiple U.S. online news outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, did live stream the speech on their websites.”[19]

Secretary of State John Kerry was even stronger in his view than other politicians. He was so angry at Netanyahu’s claptrap that he declared,

“We’re conducting foreign policy, this isn’t a synagogue.”

Kerry moved on to say that instead of serious, logical and constructive foreign policy, America is being hoodwinked by “sandpaper like Netanyahu. Netanyahu just drove us crazy…because he was just unbelievably difficult.”[20]

Stephen M. Walt of Harvard and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has written that “Bibi blows up the special relationship.”[21] Both Walt and his co-author John J. Mearshemer of the University of Chicago argued back in 2012 that Obama never believed that Iran could be an existential threat to the U.S. or Israel.[22]

This is again based on solid evidence. Citing then-IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz, Goldberg asserted that the Iranian leadership is rational, and numerous scholarly studies have indicated that Iran is not as irrational as Netanyahu has hopelessly and desperately tried to say.[23]

So, Netanyahu once again lied big time. And if Zionists are having a hard time chewing that statement up and digesting it, let us bring in Gideon Aronoff and Dan Flesher of the Jewish Daily Foward. On the first day of this month, those two writers seemed to indicate that Netanyahu, as we have repeatedly argued in previous articles, is on the borderline of craziness. Both writers posed four important questions which Netanyahu has to wrestle with for the rest of his political machination:

1. Is there any outcome you would endorse that Iran could conceivably accept?
2. If you won’t accept any agreement that could in fact be reached with Iranian leaders, what alternatives do you propose and how do you expect us to defend them?
3. Why isn’t it in America’s interest to pursue a cold peace with Iran?
4. Why must you make your case in a public speech to Congress?[24]

Does Netanyahu have enough political fire power to convincingly and rationally respond to those questions? No.

In any event, the Zionist power is shaking, and the people within the movement seem to feel the anti-Zionist heat. Thanks to VT writers and others who have made this possible. Gordon Duff has recently written that Netanyahu’s speech “was an epic failure on a Homeric scale…a humiliation he can never recover from.”

Duff is certainly right, and even though people will probably give allegiance to the Zionist machine in public, they readily discuss in private that Netanyahu is just a “chickenshit.”

Furthermore, the fact that the Jewish community itself has widely criticized Netanyahu’s stand on Iran certainly suggests that anti-Zionism does not equal to anti-Semitism, as Jewish Neocons Jonathan S. Tobin and Steven Bayme and their Zionist puppets like Joseph Farah of World Net Daily preposterously declared.[25] Farah declared back in 2012:

“The truth is that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism, a virulent form of hatred of an entire people – almost synonymous with racism. And, even more specifically, what I call “Palestinianism” equals anti-Semitism.”[26]

This particular position, as we all know, lacks moral and intellectual rigor largely because there are countless Jews who are anti-Zionists. For example, can Farah really look at people like Norman Finkelstein, John J. Mearsheimer, Gideon Levy, Miko Peled, Gilad Atzmond, Brother Nathanael Kapner, among others, and say that they are anti-Semites?

How would Farah begin a conversation with Finkelstein, when Finkelstein’s family was in Nazi Germany? How about Gabor Mate, a Jewish medical doctor who obviously is a staunch anti-Zionist?

At any rate, I do not expect Farah to think through these issues seriously because you cannot reason people out of an idea which was not formed on the basis of reason and moral principles.

We argued relentlessly in the past that the Zionist regime is powerful but fragile. When a political system is not built on truth but on falsehood, the system can fall at any moment. The recent Netanyahu debacle is a sign which indicates that the Zionist regime is not going to reign forever.

Yes, the regime still exerts enormous power on politics and much of the world, and there is no doubt that the Obama administration still allows Jewish Neocons to dictate his policies in places like Ukraine. As Paul Craig Roberts has recently argued, the neoconservative ideology has destroyed the friendly relations between America and Russia.

But no one would have believed that the administration would publicly oppose Netanyahu’s policies with respect to Iran.

Furthermore, no one would have believed that even Israelis and much of the Jewish community in the U.S. would publicly disregard Netanyahu as a sounding cymbal.[27] Who would have believed that Dianne Feinstein would say things like Netanyahu “doesn’t speak for me on this”[28]?

President Dwight Eisenhower “threatened sanctions against Israel during the 1956 Suez crisis,”[29] but no one has ever come close to calling an Israeli Prime Minister a “chickenshit.” Some readers have pointed out that “none of these ‘great politicians’ are really calling the shots.”

I sympathize with those comments. But the recent conflict is a start. It would be disastrous for any politician to quickly “call the shots” so quickly, but slow or gradual progress is idealistic in this ideological war.

In short, one should not be too pessimistic about recent events. Let us all fight to see the fall of the Zionist regime. Perhaps Alexander Solzhenitsyn should be an inspiration to all here:

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”

In other words, one word of truth is powerful enough to bring an entire body of lies to ruin. The Zionist movement knows and fears this, and this is why they want to silence opponents with cheap and simplistic shots such as “anti-Semitism.” Listen to the late Israeli minister and lawmaker Shulamit Aloni very carefully here:

[1] Nathan Guttman, “Why Israel Lobby Is Biggest Casualty of Feud Over Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech,” Jewish Daily Forward, February 11, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jon Basil Utley, “Netanyahu and the Crumbling Israeli Lobby,” American Conservative, March 2, 2015.

[4] J. J. Goldberg, “Benjamin Netanyahu’s Iran Exaggerations Now Clear for All to See,” Jewish Daily Forward, February 27, 2015.

[5] Bradley Burston, “A Special Place in Hell,” Haaretz, March 2, 2015.

[6] Lance Simmens, “Bibi Blusters, Boehner Blunders, Another Day in Republican Fantasyland,” Huffington Post, March 4, 2015.

[7] Luis Gutierrez, “Why I Won’t Be at Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech,” Huffington Post, March 2, 2015.

[8] “Mr. Netanyahu’s Unconvincing Speech to Congress,” NY Times, March 3, 2015.

[9] John Hudson, “Susan Rice Tells Israel Lobbyists Their Demands Are ‘Unachievable,’” Foreign Policy, March 2, 2015.

[10] quoted in Barak Ravid, “Netanyahu outlined impossible Iran deal, U.S. official says,” Haaretz, March 4, 2015.

[11] Thomas L. Friedman, “What Bibi Didn’t Say,” NY Times, March 3, 2015.

[12] Charlotte Alfred, “Did Benjamin Netanyahu Lie To Congress? 5 Fact-Checked Claims From The Speech,” Huffington Post, March 3, 2014.

[13] Quoted in Nick Robbins-Early, “What Israeli Media And Politicians Thought Of Netanyahu’s Big Speech,” Huffington Post, March 3, 2015.

[14] Jonathan Lis and Yarden Skop, “Livni, Lapid Slam Netanyahu for ‘Ruining’ Ties with U.S.,” Haaretz, January 24, 2015; Itamar Sharon, “PM ruining US ties for election speech, Lapid and Livni say,” Times of Israel, January 24, 2015.

[15] Nick Robins-Early, “What Israeli Media And Politicians Thought Of Netanyahu’s Big Speech,” Huffington Post, March 3, 2015.

[16] Ilene Prusher, “How Israel Sees Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress,” Time, March 2, 2015.

[17] Quoted in Lauren French, “Nancy Pelosi: Netanyahu speech ‘insulting to the intelligence of the United States,’” Politico, March 3, 2015.

[18] See Arit John, “Rand Paul’s Israel Problem Summed Up in One Telling Gif,” Bloomberg, March 3, 2015.

 [19] Tina Daunt, “Broadcast Networks Don’t Carry Israeli Prime Minister’s Address to Congress,” Hollywood Reporter, March 3, 2015.

[20] Quoted in Gil Troy, “A History of U.S.-Israel Breakups and Makeups,” Daily Beast, March 3, 2015.

[21] Stephen M. Walt, “Bibi Blows Up the Special Relationship,” Foreign Policy, March 2, 2015.

[22] John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt, and Robert and Renee Felfer, “Mr. Obama Must Take a Stand Against Israel over Iran,” Financial Times, March 4, 2012.

[23] See for example Trita Parsi, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007); A Single Roll of Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

[24] Gideon Aronoff and Dan Fleshler, “4 Questions for Benjamin Netanyahu,” Jewish Daily Forward, March 1, 2015.

[25] Jonathan S. Tobin, “Anti-Zionism Always Equals Anti-Semitism,” Commentary, August 18, 2014; Jonathan S. Tobin, Campus Incitement Proves Anti-Zionism Still Equals Anti-Semitism,” Commentary, February 5, 2015; Steven Bayme, “Does Anti-Zionism Equal Anti-Semitism?,” Daily Beast, October 22, 2012; Joseph Farah, “‘Palestinianism’ Equals Anti-Semitism,” World Net Daily, March 30, 2012.

[26] Joseph Farah, “‘Palestinianism’ Equals Anti-Semitism,” World Net Daily, March 30, 2012.

[27] For a recent article on this, see Jonathan Alter, “Even Israeli Hawks Are Angry at Netanyahu,” Daily Beast, March 1, 2015.

[28] Nathan Guttman, “AIPAC Seeks Unity as Feud Erupts Over ‘Arrogant’ Benjamin Netanyahu,” Jewish Daily Forward, March 1, 2015; see also Bradley Burston, “A Special Place in Hell,” Haaretz, March 2, 2015.

[29] Jonathan Alter, “Even Israeli Hawks Are Angry at Netanyahu,” Daily Beast, March 1, 2015.

Jonas E. Alexis, Assistant Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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