AIPAC, the tip of the Israel lobby spear in Washington, began an executive search for a Deputy Director for Hispanic Outreach  (PDF)   in August of 2006.  Reporting directly to AIPAC's "National Outreach Director" in Washington, the responsibility of the new deputy director will be to "develop relationships with key members of the Hispanic community and encourage their involvement in political advocacy in support of the US-Israel relationship."

AIPAC's focus on the Hispanic community dovetails with an unprecedented opportunity for Spanish language media outreach.  Shareholders of Univision Communications, the leading Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S., voted to sell the company last week to a group of private-equity firms for $12.3 billion.  The deal was signed even though a higher bid from Mexican TV giant Grupo Televisa was still on the table.  Led by media mogul Haim Saban, the US group acquired the equivalent of the "ABC" network in terms of Spanish speaking US viewership.  Among all Spanish-language US networks, Univision averaged 3.7 million viewers followed by Telemundo at 880,000 and TeleFutura's 660,000 viewers.

Full VOA Discussion (Spanish Real Video 256kbps)  Transcript (English HTM)

Jeffrey Blankfort: "The way you describe it, with solid evidence, makes it look like a new Mafia.  And that they really, not only pay no attention to international law, but they see US law as something they can skip, eliminate, and not pay any attention to...You list espionage, conspiracy, wire fraud, military contract fraud, extortion, private correspondence with a foreign government, false tax returns, bribery of public officials.  It is all in there, and yet, you don't see this in the mainstream press... "

Grant Smith: "There are all of these wonderful laws on the books to combat perennial corruption that can affect any government. And yet we see a lot of police and prosecutor attention focused on petty crime and theft and narcotics trafficking and that sort of thing. We see very few willing to step up the plate and look at some of these mustier and dustier but more important statutes, that, if properly enforced, would actually clean up government."

Grant Smith:  "Absolutely, in fact that is just the question.  1559 is a relatively new resolution calling for Hezbollah to disarm and get out of southern Lebanon.  Lebanon has taken the same approach that, unfortunately, that some Bush administration officials have taken, of kind of reinterpreting UN resolutions, to say that we (Hezbollah) are the army of southern Lebanon.  And that creates a lot of problems.  But 242 is a UN Security Council resolution that was adopted on November 22 of 1967, again, after the '67 war, which was calling for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from "territory occupied in the recent conflict", meaning the Six Day War.  Now (Israeli Ambassador) Daniel Gillerman was put on the spot in a UN standup a couple of days ago by someone confronting him with this, and he completely obfuscated the issue by saying "well that wasn't a security council resolution" and a number of other things which weren't true.  So there's just this unwillingness to really face up to these larger regional issues in spite of the fact of there being various peace plans, which would allow for full Arab recognition of Israel if only it returns to 1967 borders.  Some of the larger issues are not on the table, and those are the issues that are going to drive both parties back to conflict."

"that the rarity of prosecution under the statutes does not indicate that the statutes were not to be enforced as written. We think in any event, the rarity of use of the statute as a basis for prosecution is at best a questionable basis for nullifying the clear language of the statute, and we think the revision of 1950 and its reenactment of section 793(d) demonstrate that Congress did not consider such statute meaningless or intend that the statute and its prohibitions were to be abandoned."

Judge Ellis may be signaling from the bench to both the DOJ and grand juries across America a new willingness to try criminal statutes AIPAC would rather see lying dormant.   The two most relevant are the Logan Act and Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). No person or organization has ever been successfully prosecuted under the 1798 Logan Act. Logan Act clauses clearly seek to outlaw the kinds of core AIPAC lobbying activities achieved by ongoing communications links and coordinated activities with a foreign government....

The Bush administration's failure to intervene could have dire future consequences. A new regional "Nakba" may begin to produce refugees and retaliation-driven radicals who have no doubts as to the origin of the bombs and artillery shells exploding  across Lebanon.  They are "made in the USA".   

7/25/2006 Imad Moustapha "Bombs or Blankets?"
7/25/2006 Saudi Arabia "Who pays for the Israeli Mess?"
7/25/2006 AFP Official Israeli Pretext for Attack on Lebanon Unraveling
7/25/2006 Bankok Post UN Now Taking Direct Casualties from Israeli Pounding

Pedro Rodriguez Diario ABC de Espanol: To me it looks like an amplified version of what happened in Gaza with Hamas last month (June) with the capture of a soldier.   We're talking about the use of force, destruction, detentions, incursions, but with absolutely no results.  In other words, Israel is applying the same response techniques that got it no results in Gaza to Lebanon.

Grant Smith, IRmep: I think there are very important events that everyone is overlooking.  There is a movie called "Saving Private Ryan".  This is NOT "Saving Private Ryan".

The conflict in Gaza started on June 8 when the Israelis assassinated a Hamas military officer.  Then on June 9, there was the terrible Israeli attack on a family picnicking on the Gaza beach in which eight people died.  The entire Arab world watched video of a little girl running along the beach looking at the bodies of her family.

Hamas started launching rockets in response, with their home-made rockets against Israel in reaction to this violence.   Never the less there were thirty more deaths on the Gaza side due to Israeli artillery.  Then on the 24th of June we have Israel crossing into Gaza and taking two Palestinian prisoners, names unknown, who have never been heard from again.  Finally on June 25 we have the Hamas attack and capture corporal Shalit who everyone knows from the extensive news coverage. 

So there were many events, much more complex than the simple capture of prisoners, on both sides.  There is also a much larger story  in Lebanon.  In June, in the south of Lebanon the Lebanese Army captured a Mossad operative group of Abu Rafeh who had assassinated various people in Hezbollah in 2004 and 1999.   So if one is only focusing on isolated events, you might think this is all about kidnapping.  But really the conflict has been building on both borders. 

Some observers of the campaign of collective punishment see only tit-for-tat responses to terrorist acts.  Others believe Israel is now implementing the final stages of the 1996 neoconservative "Clean Break" plan authored by key Bush administration officials and former heads of Likud. 

2003 Research Report :  "Clean Break or Dirty War?"
Q&A: Under Cover of Conflict: Al-Aqsa Mosque also at Risk?
Essay:  "No, this is not 'Our' War"

AIPAC's 290 Congressional co-sponsors and staffers are facing massive opposition in their bid to pass punitive legislation on Palestinians.  An array of organized opposition from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Council for the National Interest, Council on Arab Islamic Relations, and Jewish groups such as the Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now, and Jewish Alliance for Justice has swamped representative offices with calls to scuttle the legislation. 

The bill makes a number of outrageous and purposefully unrealistic demands on the Palestinian Authority while selectively ignoring the history of Israel.  Like other legislation, the H.R. 4681 makes no mention of Israeli actions driving the cycle of violence in the region:  illegal settlements, annexations of Palestinian territory, theft or retention of Palestinian financial assets, and ongoing targeted killings sanctioned by the Israeli government or colonizers.   Essential facts are ignored by H.R. 4681.   In the ongoing conflict since the year 2000, Israelis have killed nearly four times as many Palestinians.  29,786 Palestinians have been injured in the violence, vs 7,633 Israelis.

Today Judge T.S. Ellis III offered a rare second opportunity to the Rosen and Weissman defense team.  They again made their case that the indictment of the two former AIPAC lobbyists was "trampling on their 1st Amendment rights".   Although Judge Ellis established an August, 2006 trial date he continues to consider a motion to dismiss charges altogether.

In a similar March 30, 2006 hearing[i], the defense concentrated on portraying the 1917 Espionage Act as fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional.  The indictment charges Rosen and Weissman with violating sections of the Act by having "unlawful possession" of "information relating to the national defense." Written in 1917, and never updated, the Espionage Act does not use the term "classified" when referring to national defense information.  The law's musty antiquity offers the defendants abundant openings for attack.   

The mainstream press has come to the aid of Rosen and Weissman by promulgating the "slippery slope" argument.  The Washington Post has argued more than once that the charges leveled against two foreign lobbyists run amok could soon be turned against investigative reporters. 

The "everybody does it" defense, of course, is pure nonsense.  Prosecutorial discretion means that the press won't be a DOJ target any time soon.   But cracking down on think tanks and lobbies trafficking classified information is another matter. 

See the full report for charts and comments HTML PDF

Carlos Chirinos: "Can the US recover some of its influence in the region through the new Israeli elections?"

Grant Smith: "The only way the US is going to recover its influence is maintaining an impartial position in the peace negotiations. But unfortunately, the Bush administration has a strong inclination toward the Israelis.

For example, the Roadmap for Peace stipulates that negotiations must define the "final status" of Palestinian refugees, and that the final borders must not be unilaterally imposed by any side. Never the less, in a letter published in the year 2004, president Bush supported the idea that the Israelis need not return to 1949 borders, and also accepted the idea that Palestinian refugees expulsed from Israel would have no 'right of return'.'

We've see the United States consistently taking Israel's side, and this has caused many problems for the Palestinians."

Carlos Chirinos: "But this attitude that you say that Bush is taking, is not exclusive to this administration, haven't other administrations done the same?"

Grant Smith: "This week, a report titled "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" has generated interest and controversy for revealing just that, the indisputable existence of a strong lobby that unconditionally supports Israel. This is something many people recognize even though others would like it to be considered 'controversial'."

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