Archive for August 2012
FP 50 Inadvertently Reveals Israel’s Dominance of GOP
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
August 31, 2012
Foreign Policy magazine has compiled a list of the 50 Republicans who have the greatest influence on the GOP’s foreign policy. “Politics is mostly about people — and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to foreign policy,” explains Foreign Policy in its introduction. With the U.S. presidential election looming, the magazine offers “to peel back the curtain on this rarefied part of the Establishment” to better inform American voters about “the advisers who will determine the country’s course in the world” in the event that they elect Mitt Romney. The FP 50, it says, are “all GOP partisans” from the different “ideological traditions” — namely, realism, neoconservatism, and “even” isolationism — that are “currently fighting for the soul of their party’s foreign policy.” A cursory look at the list, however, shows that a far more influential ideological tradition — Zionism — holds sway over the Republican Party.
Saudi Arabia: The Neocons’ Once and Future Target
By Stephen J. Sniegoski
The Passionate Attachment
August 28, 2012
The American removal of Saddam had seemingly led to Iranian and Shiite ascendancy in the Middle East, with the Shiite demographic majority being able to dominate Iraq’s national government, though an autonomous Kurdish region was created, and the Sunnis threatened a civil war. A new pro-Iran Shiite crescent emerged extending from Iraq to Lebanon, as Hezbollah gained power in the latter country. It should be noted that Assad’s Syria, Iran’s principal ally, has been something of an outlier here since its alliance with Iran has been based on national interest, not on religion or ideology. For Syria is a secular nationalist state, and while its politically dominant Alawites are an offshoot from Shiism, they are regarded as heretics by the orthodox Shiites because of their non-Muslim belief in the divinity of Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law.
Sunni rulers in the Gulf, especially the Saudi leadership, viewed the extension of Shiite/Iranian power and influence with much trepidation. This was greatly compounded by the fact that the “Arab spring” induced their own oppressed Shiite population, in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and in neighboring Bahrain, where they constituted demographic majorities, to engage in protests for greater freedom and a more equitable sharing of the wealth. In February 2011, after weeks of largely Shiite pro-democracy demonstrations against the Bahrain monarchy, Saudi Arabia, at the behest of the Bahraini royal family, intervened militarily, along with troops from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (under the aegis of Gulf Cooperation Council), to effectively crush the protests.
The Saudis also sought to undercut this expanding Iranian influence by aiding the largely Sunni rebels against the Assad pro-Iranian regime. With additional support from the West, Turkey, and, in all likelihood, Israel, this revolt has reached the stage where the fall of the Assad regime has become a real possibility.
The fall of Assad would seriously weaken Iran’s ability to inflict harm on Israel in retaliation against an attack by Israel or the United States. And the goal of Likudnik-led Israel and the neocons is not simply to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, but to so weaken the country as to make it incapable of opposing Israel in any significant way—which most probably would entail the elimination of the Islamic regime. But should Iran fall, the Likudnik-neocon war agenda would still not be complete. It is very likely that Saudi Arabia would be the next target, especially since it has already been mentioned in the neocon war agenda.
Peace is War: How Israel Induces America into War with Iran
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
August 24, 2012
On August 17, America’s two leading newspapers featured strikingly similar opinion pieces, providing further evidence of a coordinated effort by Israel and its American partisans to induce the United States into waging another disastrous Middle East war. In the Washington Post, former chief of Israeli military intelligence Amos Yadlin helpfully suggested “5 steps Obama can take to avert a strike on Iran”; while President Obama’s former top Middle East advisor Dennis Ross advised readers of the New York Times “How America Can Slow Israel’s March to War.” Perhaps the most notable difference between the two op-eds was that the latter proposed a mere four steps Washington supposedly needs to take in order to appease the allegedly trigger-happy Israelis.
Israel is the only real winner of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
August 18, 2012
Award-winning Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari recently interviewed me about the ongoing destabilization of the Middle East and North Africa commonly referred to as the Arab Spring.
KZ: In a recent article in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer wrote that the SCAF hastily dissolved the Egyptian parliament because the majority of members of parliament elected in the post-Mubarak elections were Islamists. Does Mohammad Morsi’s acceptance of the military council’s decision denote that he might be inclined toward the West? The U.S. Secretary of State Clinton has just paid a visit to Egypt and met with President Morsi. Are these signs indicative of the fact that Morsi has a pro-Western attitude and may betray the Egyptian Revolution?
MÓC: First of all, I don’t believe that there was a genuine revolution in Egypt in the first place. Like the “colour revolutions” in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere, the so-called “Arab Spring” was orchestrated by the regime change specialists at the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and the wider network of groups engaged in what is euphemistically called “democracy promotion.” While the mainstream media cannot openly admit this, they have given some strong hints. For example, a New York Times report in April 2011, aptly entitled “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” acknowledged that “as American officials and others look back at the uprisings of the Arab Spring, they are seeing that the United States’ democracy-building campaigns played a bigger role in fomenting protests than was previously known, with key leaders of the movements having been trained by the Americans in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections.” Unless we are to believe that these “democracy-building campaigns” were not intended to undermine authoritarian regimes like Mubarak’s, then there’s no “revolution” for the American-educated Morsi to betray. Interestingly, it appears that it was Krauthammer, a Guardian of Zion awardee, who was the first to use the term “Arab Spring.” In the same 2005 piece, he presciently wrote, “The democracy project is, of course, just beginning.”
KZ: What will be, in your view, the attitude of the new government in Egypt toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Prior to the elections, the Israelis were extremely worried that an Islamist president might revoke the Camp David Accords. However, Morsi hasn’t decided to do so. Will the new government in Egypt support the Palestinian resistance front?
MÓC: One has to distinguish between what Israeli officials say publicly and what they think privately. If Tel Aviv was genuinely worried about an Islamist government revoking the Camp David Accords, then why has its American lobby been so supportive of a democratic transition to civilian rule in Cairo, knowing full well that this would increase the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood? A recent article featured on the website of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) gives a clearer insight into Israeli strategic thinking. Entitled “Is Israel the Winner of the Arab Spring?” the piece concludes that “the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has, paradoxically, made Israel stronger as Israel’s enemies have turned on each other.” As the JINSA fellow astutely observes, “The Egyptian body politic may indeed be more hostile to the Jewish State, but its capabilities for acting on that hostility have markedly declined.”
Israeli official admits ‘extensive connections’ with Syrian rebels
By Maidhc Ó Cathail
The Passionate Attachment
August 17, 2012
A Press TV report provides further evidence of what readers of The Passionate Attachment have known for some time — Israel has been quietly but unequivocally supporting regime change in Damascus:
Deputy Minister for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee Ayoob Kara’s bureau chief has met with Syrian insurgents in Bulgaria as Tel Aviv’s official envoy.
Mendi Safadi held the meeting during his recent visit to Bulgaria.
Israel’s ambassador to Sofia said he was not aware of the schedule for the meeting, and was left out of the talks.
Safadi, however, insisted that his trip to Bulgaria was at the request of an unnamed body within the Israeli regime.
He claimed to have extensive connections with Syrian insurgents, hinting that he had organized meetings between Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and anti-Damascus figures.
Sadafi said there are things that he could not tell the media.
The meeting comes on the heels of remarks made by Israeli spy chief Dan Meridor, who had voiced Tel Aviv’s support for a regime change in Syria.
The Yinon Thesis Vindicated: Neocons, Israel, and the Fragmentation of Syria
By Stephen J. Sniegoski
The Passionate Attachment
August 12, 2012
It is widely realized now that the fall of President Bashar Assad’s regime would leave Syria riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict that could splinter the country into smaller enclaves. Already there has been a demographic shift in this direction, as both Sunnis and Alawites flee the most dangerous parts of the county, seeking refuge within their own particular communities. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Syria that, as the entire country becomes too difficult to secure, the Assad regime will retreat to an Alawite redoubt in the northern coastal region as a fallback position.
Syrian Kurds, about ten percent of the country’s population, are also interested in gaining autonomy or joining with a larger Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD)—linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a separatist insurgency in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast region for nearly three decades—has gained control of key areas in northeast Syria. While Turkey has supported the Syrian opposition, it is terrified of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, believing that it could provide a safe haven for staging attacks into Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish autonomy would encourage separatist sentiment within the Turkish Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened to invade the border areas of Syria to counter such a development and Turkish armed forces with armor have been sent to Turkey’s border with the Syrian Kurdish region. A Turkish invasion would add further complexities to the fracturing of Syria.
What has not been readily discussed in reference to this break-up of Syria is that the Israeli and global Zionist Right has long sought the fragmentation of Israel’s enemies so as to weaken them and thus enhance Israel’s primacy in the Middle East. While elements of this geostrategic view can be traced back to even before the creation of the modern state of Israel, the concept of destabilizing and fragmenting enemies seems to have been first articulated as an overall Israeli strategy by Oded Yinon in his 1982 piece, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.” Yinon had been attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment in the years of Likudnik Menachem Begin’s leadership. Israel Shahak’s translation of Yinon’s article was titled “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.”
Circumcision as a Political Issue
By Philip Giraldi
The Passionate Attachment
August 3, 2012
One wouldn’t think that circumcision had any political aspect, but as it is a Jewish religious practice it, of course, does – something that has sometimes been referred to as Jewish Identity Politics. The Washington Post ran a story and an editorial on July 25th demonstrating just how it works. The story, on page 3 of the printed edition, claims significant benefits derived from circumcisions, most notably that the possible transmission of the AIDS virus between a man and an infected woman decreases markedly. But the comments on the article, which basically recommends circumcision on public health grounds for African men, tell another story. The actual statistics used to support the surveys cited in the article show differences that are described as statistically insignificant and deliberately distorted. Several comments note that it is barbaric to mutilate the genitals of a child for a religious reason, recommending instead that those who support the practice should wait until they turn eighteen to have the operation performed on themselves. Other comments note that any article discussing circumcision in a critical way will inevitably result in a number of rebuttals that label the critics anti-Semites.
The recent controversy about circumcision springs from a German court ruling that the practice is genital mutilation of a non-consenting child and is therefore illegal. The ruling has caused circumcisions to be suspended in some German hospitals as well as in some health care centers in Switzerland and Austria. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under intense pressure from the usual suspects and is supporting a law permitting circumcision if one is Jewish or Muslim, even though the German public apparently supports the court ruling and the ban. Jews and Muslims both claim that it is a hallowed religious practice, but, as is usually the case, the loudest outcry is coming from American Jewish groups and newspapers like The Washington Post. The Post’s lead editorial “The Misguided Push to Ban Circumcision,” states that “The court’s case against circumcision mixes extreme and insensitive secularism with unstated but radical mistrust of parents,” then adding “Wherever they might occur, circumcision bans that disrespect religious traditions, or parents’ ability to weigh medical evidence, would be profoundly misguided.” The editorial writer incorrectly claims that even a circumcision performed for actual medical reasons would be banned and then goes on to summarize the newspaper’s own misleading story on page 3 to promote the public health benefits that it claims are derived from the practice.
One wonders how the Post views the religiously and culturally derived female genital mutilation that occurs frequently in parts of Africa. Is that one not okay while it is all right to do something similar to little boys? Of course there is also the hypocrisy factor — if it were only a Muslim practice and not Jewish one would have to suspect that the Post would be among the first in line to agree that it is immoral and should be made illegal.
What comes next? I am now fully expecting a congressional resolution, probably introduced by Howard Berman or Joe Lieberman, condemning the German government for its denial of religious freedom. It will likely pass unanimously.
Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a regular contributor to The Passionate Attachment.
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