The Culture of Calumny and the Degradation of Democratic Values

The ZPC’s successful blacklisting and purge of Charles Freeman from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council illustrates the stranglehold that it has on all appointments within the US Government. The Freeman purge reveals the ZPC tactics and methods, its web of power among different branches of government and their links with the leading Zionist Jewish American organization. The purge highlights the fact that loyalty to the state of Israel has become a condition for holding any significant office in the US government and that, conversely, any candidate for high office, no matter what their qualifications, who has criticized Israeli policy, is automatically banished. The application of the loyalty oath to Israel, which occurred in the purge of Charles Freeman, is a clear act of intimidation directed against the entire US political class: Criticize Israel, in any context, and write off your career forever! The purge of Freeman has vast present and future consequences for US politics, public debate and democratic freedom in America.

As is almost always the case when any issue or political appointment of interest to the state of Israel arises in the US, AIPAC seizes the initiative. In the case of the Freeman Purge, once the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, announced his appointment of Charles Freeman, AIPAC circulated a ‘dossier’ of lies, slanders and fabrications about the man and his positions, centered on his criticism of specific Israeli actions, namely their brutality in Gaza and Lebanon and their violations of human rights. The Zionist-Jewish onslaught was led by (none-other-than) Steve Rosen, the long-time AIPAC hatchet man and indicted felon, currently on trial for espionage – handing over classified US documents related to Iran policy to Israeli government agents. Under AIPAC’s promotion, a tsunami of articles and commentaries attacking Freeman appeared in the major media, painting him as an ‘Arab tool’, ‘anti-Israel’ and worse. Parallel to the media campaign, the leading Jewish-Zionist Senators Schumer and Leiberman and Representative Cantor launched a virulent campaign in Congress, even though his nomination did not require Congressional approval. Schumer ensured White House complicity in the purge through direct communication with White House Chief of Staff and fellow Zionist Rahm Emmanuel who likely passed on the ‘line’ to fellow Zionist Axelrod, Obama’s chief adviser. Not a single official in the entire Obama regime at any time voiced a single word in support of Blair’s appointment of Freeman nor refute the lies and character assassination harangues by the likes of Lieberman, Schumer and their fellow travelers. Where the Obama regime was not openly complicit, the Zionist purge machinery cowed it into silent acquiescence.

The deep and insidious authoritarian and partisan character of the Zionist congressional leadership evident in the purge of Charles Freeman is consistent with Schumer and Lieberman’s support for Michael Hayden as Obama’s CIA Director, the key agent in implementing Bush’s illegal domestic espionage program and their support for the ultra-Zionist Michael Mukasey as Bush’s Attorney General, who condoned the use by American agents of water-torture on ‘suspects’.

What is striking about the Zionist-led Congressional purge of Freeman is the fact that its leaders openly stated that they killed his nomination in order to stifle any criticism of Israeli policy. New York Senator Schumer said: “Charles Freeman was the wrong guy for this position. His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration. I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him and I am glad they (sic) did the right thing.” (quoted by Glen Greenwald in “Charles Freeman Fails the Loyalty Test”, www.salon.com March 10, 2009)

The power and arrogance of the ZPC is such that Schumer openly boasted on how he brought the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair to capitulate and force the resignation of his own appointee. In his widely published withdrawal statement, Freeman eloquently described the destructive power and operations of the Zionist Power Configuration:

“The libels on me and their easily traceable e-mail trails show conclusively that there is a powerful lobby determined to prevent any view other than its own from being aired.”

“The tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth.”

“The aim of this lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.” ( quoted in Aljazeera, March 10, 2009)

By purging Freeman, the ZPC is in a position to influence future US intelligence directors and ensure that their reports do not contradict Israeli ‘intelligence’, especially its fabrications about Iran’s nuclear program. Schumer, Lieberman, AIPAC and the Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations have gained another vital lever of power in forcing US policy into a military confrontation with Iran in line with the dictates of Israel.

The power of the ZPC over the Obama regime has major consequences for US foreign policy, especially war policy in the Middle East and throughout the world where countries, regions, movements and people reject Israel’s militarist-colonialist state and racist Zionist ideology. The same politicians who ‘stand with Israel’ are also the ones who follow the line of military confrontation with Iran unless it capitulates to Israeli-US ultimatums to surrender their nuclear-energy policies and links to anti-colonial Muslim/Arab and other independent movements and governments.

‘Negotiations’ with Iran, Syria and Palestine, as proposed by Obama and with his Zionist appointees and the conditions, which they demand, are non-starters: They become automatic set-ups for resorting to a military confrontation, escalation of sanctions and for condoning Israeli land grabbing. The result is the Obama regime’s continued massive military build-up and expenditure in a time of catastrophic economic recession. The apparent irrationality of diverting scarce economic resources toward endless wars and military confrontations in which no US security interests are at stake can only be explained by the militarist interest of the state of Israel and the power of its US supporters to impose its definition of ‘security’ on the US government.

To empirically test our hypothesis about the scope and depth of the influence of the Zionist Power Configuration and its ability to subordinate Obama Administration’s policies to Israeli interest, we have examined 10 important issue areas. We stated Israeli positions and actions, particularly on vital issues of war and peace affecting US interests, key appointments and strategic relations. We have found that in almost all issue areas, the Israeli position was translated into US policy. This high level correlation in turn was explained by the intense activity of the Zionist Power Configuration and the high level of penetration of pro-Israeli functionaries of all relevant policy-making positions and their veto power over appointments exercised by the ZPC and its Congressional leaders.

The Zionist Power configuration

The Jewish Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) openly organized and masterminded the withdrawal of veteran diplomat, Charles Freeman, from the leadership of the President’s National Intelligence Council. It is one of Israel’s biggest victories in its effort to control US foreign policy in the Middle East. The NIC is a worldwide apparatus, made up of 16 intelligence agencies with 100,000 employees and a $50 billion dollar budget. It is the ‘brains’ and ‘hands’ collecting the most confidential and important information used to analyze and formulate US policy and in running the clandestine operations of the entire US global empire. By their brazen purge of the top choice of Obama’s Intelligence Chief Admiral Blair, the ZPC has announced to the entire US political establishment, its allies and enemies, that the next appointment must have their vetting and approval, which means loyalty to Israeli policies. Together with their dominant presence in the Executive branch, including the White House and the President’s closest advisers, their public display of total dominance over both houses of the legislature and their growing penetration into the civilian-military command in the Pentagon, their effective takeover of the top intelligence positions closes the circle of Zionist control, or better – stranglehold, over the entire US state. The result is the subordination of US national interests and policies to the militarist aims of Israel, including support for Israeli conquests and hegemony in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Zionists in Power

The ‘coincidence’ or correlation between Israel’s illegal, militarist policies and the Obama regime’s approval and compliance, even when it involves sacrificing electoral promises, national economic and security interests and world public opinion, can in large part be explained by the appointment of veteran Israel Firsters to decisive foreign policy and advisory positions. At the very center of the Obama regimes, in the most influential policy-making position is David Axelrod, Senior Adviser to the president, who was recently described in the New York Times as: “carrying more weight than most anyone else on the president’s payroll…There are few words that come across the president’s lips that have not been blessed Mr. Axelrod. He reviews every speech, studies every major policy position and works…to prepare responses to the crisis of the day.” (New York Times, March 9, 2009). Axelrod’s longtime friend and fellow Zionist, the White House Chief of Staff, Israeli-American Rahm Emmanuel, meet every morning to coordinate their agendas for the White House. The Zionist duet, the pizza-munching, herbal tea drinking Rasputins from Chicago, are the most direct and influential political Zionists ensuring the primacy of Israel’s interests in setting US-Middle East policy – from starving Gaza to attacking Iran. No doubt, Axelrod and Emmanuel had their ‘input’ on the Obama-Clinton appointment of fellow-Zionist Jeffery Feltman and Daniel Shapiro as chief negotiators with Syria (BBC, March 7, 2009). Their agenda, Israel’s priorities, are certain to preclude any comprehensive settlement. The Zionist White House duet was strikingly silent, as their fellow Zionists skewered Charles Freeman’s appointment to lead Obama’s National Intelligence Council and ignored Israel’s humiliation of Secretary of State Clinton during her visit to Israel when the Jewish state bulldozed the homes of Palestinian families in Arab East Jerusalem on the very day of her arrival, repudiating Obama’s ‘two-state’ solution.

With the advise and consent of Zionist chief economic adviser, Laurence Summers, the Obama regime appointed fellow Zionist and ex-Clintonite crony David Cohen to the top job of monitoring ‘terrorist financing’ (Financial Times, March 9, 2009 p.2). Cohen will be in a position to pursue several crucial tasks for the Israeli state, including persecuting any and all Muslim charities and Palestinian humanitarian organizations and pressuring US and overseas financial, export and investment funds to disinvest from Arab and Muslim countries critical of Israel. He can be expected to aggressively pressure European and Asian banks and exporters to cease trade and investment with Iran. While on paper a ‘secondary appointment’, in reality Cohen will play a key role in promoting the hard-line Israeli-Zionist economic sanctions against Iran and maintaining the blockade on Gaza. The head of Obama’s nuclear non-proliferation agency is Gary Samore, who clearly established his Israel-First credentials in a speech in Israel on December 18, 2008 when he declared that he favored bombing Iran if it failed to shut down its uranium enrichment program – a program, which is legal under the International Non-Proliferation Treaty (Financial Times, February 24, 2009 p. 9). On February 24, 2009 the Obama regime appointed Dennis Ross as special adviser to Hilary Clinton for the Gulf Region. Ross in one of Israel’s top operatives in the Washington political establishment with long-term working relations with Israeli and US policy institutes linked to Israeli military, intelligence and foreign policy establishment. In November 2008, Ross signed off on a document advocating a military assault on Iran. Ross, as President Clinton’s envoy to the Israel-Palestine negotiations, contributed to the break down by embracing Israel’s non-negotiable positions and vilifying Yassar Arafat as the ‘stumbling block’.

The Zionist power configuration dominate all the key foreign policy committees in Congress, either directly through Jewish Zionists or elected representative who are in tow via financial contributions or threats of electoral retaliation and mass media smear campaigns. In the first weeks in office, the Zionist political machine has successfully blocked initiatives by some Obama advisers to attend the Durban anti-racism conference, and has deflected criticism of Israel’s starvation blockade against Gaza by two Congressmen who visited Gaza to view the destruction themselves. The ZPC has slandered and forced the withdrawal of Charles Freeman’s nomination as chief of the Intelligence Advisory Committee. It has openly endorsed Israel’s massive land grab in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Obama regime, in line with Israel, has effectively buried any pretence of peace negotiations with the Palestinians by shifting focus to a ‘regional settlement/negotiations’, in which Zionist envoys are directed to pressure Syria, Lebanon and Iran to isolate all Palestinian leaders who opposed Israel’s annexation of their land and expulsion of people.

The ZPC’s deep and extensive penetration of the Obama regime represents the greatest national security threat by a foreign-directed power since the founding of the American Republic. The scope and destructive consequences will be further detailed in the text (see: “Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy: From Gaza to Tehran.”).

The ZPC’s power is manifested in the judicial branch and best illustrated in the spy trial of two prominent leaders of AIPAC - the principle pro-Israel ‘lobby’. Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Both were arrested and indicted after they admittedly took classified US documents relating to US policy toward Iran and handed them over to an Israeli Mossad Intelligence operative assigned to the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. The Federal Judge in the case, T.S, Ellis has made several rulings in favor of the spies – strengthening their contention that the act of handing classified documents to a foreign power is a ‘common practice’ in Washington and not espionage. The ZPC has been successful in mobilizing its entire mass media apparatus, Congressional followers and a broad swath of Jewish and Gentile progressives in defense of Rosen and Weissman in the name of ‘freedom of expression’ –perversely equating the stealing of classified official US documents relating to security matters and secretly passing them to an agent of a foreign government with investigative journalism’s use of government sources. The numerous FBI arrests and quiet deportations of scores of Israeli spies without charge or trials, and the frequent complaint of former US officials that ‘orders from above’ blocked their prosecution attests to the power of highly placed Zionists or authorities under their control in securing impunity to Israeli-Jewish operative committing illegal and hostile acts against the security and economic interest of the United States. The presence of so many Zionists in positions of power in the Obama regime ensures that Israeli espionage operations in the US may now be suspended because Israel can obtain any documents or deliberations directly from officials in the Obama Administration. Even better Israelis can co-author some White House and US intelligence position papers themselves!

Zionists in power, means that the US empire will continue to energetically and aggressively pursue military confrontations and regional wars in the Middle East at the behest of Israel. At no point has the Zionist-dominated White House or Congress questioned the exorbitant costs of serving Israeli interests – even in the midst of a major economic depression. Virtually the entire major media establishment and all 51 Major American Jewish Organizations, which are pressing for blockades, sanctions and preemptive war against Iran, are free to ignore the tremendous loss and suffering that this diversion of billions of US tax dollars from domestic investment to wars for Israel has caused to the American people. Zionist control over White House Middle East policy ensures that the US will be mired in endless wars in the Persian Gulf and South Asia because Israel has an open-ended military agenda encompassing the entire region and an army of agents willing and able to impose this agenda on the American government.

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James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet.

His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

He has a long history of commitment to social justice, working in particular with the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement for 11 years. In 1973-76 he was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Repression in Latin America. He writes a monthly column for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, and previously, for the Spanish daily, El Mundo. He received his B.A. from Boston University and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. The James Petras web site: http://petras.lahaine.org/index.php

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