Zionist Neocons Beginning to Feel the Heat

[Mike Ellis]

Ho ho ho! The mainstream is finally starting to take a hard look at the neocons. Watch 'em scuttle madly as the rocks they hide under are overturned!

Every time AIPAC takes a kick in the arse, an angel gets its wings.

POLITICS-US: Neocon Flap Highlights Jewish Divide

POLITICS-US: Neocon Flap Highlights Jewish Divide
By Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Jul 30 (IPS) - A mushrooming media controversy pitting neoconservatives against a prominent Jewish-American political commentator could mark a new stage in the growing battle over who speaks for the U.S. Jewish community on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the Middle East.

TIME columnist Joe Klein's accusations that Jewish neoconservatives, who played a particularly visible role in the drive to war in Iraq and have since pushed for military confrontation in Iran, sacrificed "U.S. lives and money...to make the world safe for Israel" have spurred angry charges of anti-Semitism and personal attacks from critics at such neoconservative strongholds as the Weekly Standard, National Review, and Commentary.

But the fierceness of the controversy surrounding Klein, generally considered a political centrist, highlights the growing antagonism between neo-conservative hardliners and prominent U.S. Jews whose more moderate views are aligned more closely with those of the foreign policy establishment.

The controversy began Jun. 24, when Klein argued in a TIME blog post that the "fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives -- people like [independent Democrat Sen.] Joe Lieberman and the crowd at Commentary -- plumped for this war [in Iraq], and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties."

Within a day, Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Klein of espousing "age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government".

(snip)

Neo-conservatism, a predominantly -- but by no means exclusively -- Jewish movement, got its start in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a small but influential group of Democrats began distancing themselves from the party which, in their view, had become too dovish toward the Soviet Union and too sympathetic toward Arab demands against Israel.

By 1980, most had become strong supporters of Ronald Reagan. A number of prominent neo-conservatives joined his administration, including many who would later play key roles in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.

Consigned to the political wilderness under President George H.W. Bush, the neo-conservatives became increasingly identified in the 1990s with Israel's right-wing Likud Party. It was also during the same period that they began agitating for "regime change" in Iraq, arguing that such a move would transform the balance of power in the Middle East decisively in favour of both Israel and the U.S.

They experienced a rebirth with the election of Bush's son in 2000, and particularly after the 9/11 attacks, when they played a major role, both inside the administration and in the media, in rallying the public and Congress behind war in Iraq.

But with the deterioration of the situation in Iraq, the influence of neoconservatives inside and outside the administration began to wane, and critics began charging that they had led the U.S. astray.

A series of incidents also focused critical scrutiny on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful lobbying group whose hawkish right-wing leadership has often defied both the views of the broader U.S. Jewish community and the policies of Israeli governments.

In 2004, the Justice Department charged Pentagon staffer Lawrence Franklin with passing classified U.S. government documents to two AIPAC lobbyists, who had then given the documents to an Israeli Embassy official. In January 2006, Franklin was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, while the AIPAC staffers are still awaiting trial.

In March 2006, the well-respected and staunchly realist international relations scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published the article "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books. That article, which charged that the lobby had for decades skewed U.S. policy towards Israel in a direction detrimental to U.S. interests, became the basis for their 2007 book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy".

Mearsheimer and Walt's thesis was instantly controversial. Like Klein, they were accused by critics, including the ADL and Commentary, of anti-Semitism and of perpetrating stereotypes about shadowy Jewish conspiracies.

(snip)