|
Israel's
Nukes - Michael Arria - 9/2/2021
“
|
Energix Renewable Energies, Ltd. is an Israeli
company accustomed to building out its business
on the back of huge subsidies. Overseas, the
subsidies take the form of free or Israeli
controlled foreign territory, solar and wind
resources. In the U.S., Energix is absorbing
tens of millions in federal solar energy tax
credits. Unfortunately for populations
neighboring Energix sites overseas and in
Virginia, the Israeli company has contractually
locked itself into using solar panels containing
toxic heavy metals, rather than the mostly inert
silicon panels used by 95 percent of the world.
In April 2019, Energix executed a series of
agreements with First Solar for the purchase of
panels totaling approximately USD 120 million
for the years 2019-2021 for projects in the
United States and in Israel. The primary reason
for the purchase was locking in the maximum
amount of U.S. solar energy tax credits. The
solar energy investment tax credit was gradually
to be reduced from 30 percent, at that time, to
zero by 2022. |
 |
How
IRS Commissioners gaslight Americans about illegal
settlement money laundering
What's happening since 2012? - NPR national broadcast
review - 07/23/2021
Is
AIPAC the real threat to US national security? Jane
Harman dodges key question
C-SPAN Washington Journal - 7/2/2021
Why
US Presidents and Congress Underwrite Israeli Human
Rights Violations -
Walter L. Hixson -
PR Newswire,
6/9/2021
With two major human rights
organizations now claiming Israel is an
apartheid
state,
IRmep makes
available to news media and event planners distinguished
historian and author Walter L. Hixson. Hixson's latest
book is "Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its
Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center
of US Middle East Policy."
1. Why is U.S. aid to Israel
unconditional and more than aid to other small
countries?
2. How does the U.S. help
Israel avoid accountability for ongoing human rights
violations and illegal settlements?
3. When did Israel's U.S.
lobby first form? What are some of its programs?
4. Which presidents attempted
to hold Israel accountable? What happened?
5. Should Americans expect
politicians to ever represent the movement to cut or
condition aid to Israel? What
hopeful signs are emerging?
"The power of the Israel lobbies in American political
life, widely acknowledged, has most often been discussed
in a theoretical manner. The acclaimed Walter Hixson
brings to the subject the clarity and careful
documentation of the archival historian, and in so doing
he sheds loads of illumination on lobbying that AIPAC
officials themselves have admitted flourishes best in
darkness."
--Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate
Professor of History, University of Michigan.
"A devastating, learned, brilliantly narrated study of
how the extremities of US pro-Israeli policy came about
and were maintained despite decades of severe Israeli
crimes victimizing the Palestinian people as a whole in
what had been their native country.
--Richard Falk, professor emeritus of
international law at Princeton University, is the former
United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied
Territories.
"If you ever wondered what the USA role in the ongoing
Nakba of the Palestinian people is, you need to read
this book. If you ever wondered how the Israeli lobby in
the USA corrupted the American foreign policy towards
Palestine and beyond, you need to read this book.
--Ilan Pappé is professor of history and
director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at
the University of Exeter.
Architects of Repression is now available in print,
Kindle and audio book formats.
For review copies and author media interviews and
events, email info@IRmep.org or call 202-342-7325.
IRmep is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit corporation
researching U.S. Middle East policy formulation since
2002.
Why
Congress Could
and Should Cut Off Aid
to Israel
Democrats Support
Cutting Aid, the "Squad"
and Bernie Sanders Could
But Don't
5/21/2021
The Squad and
Bernie Sanders Could Cut
Israel Aid, but Won't
Flashpoints with Dennis
Bernstein on KPFA -
5/21/2021
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...Dennis Bernstein:
Well, we are glad to
have you. It is
interesting. This seems
to be a moment in
history, although you
wouldn't know it from
the press conference
today, that people are
starting to ask more
questions about Israel,
about the way in which
they use force against
the Palestinians.
The
disproportionate force that many people now call a war
crime. We have seen one more of these sort of wars,
because everybody knows that Gaza is locked down. It's 2
million people. Half of them are children, and every
once in a while, the Gazans just get fed up, the rockets
fly, and then Israel carries out a slaughter or they
create so much tension and so many attacks and they take
so much land and expanding the ethnic cleansing that in
the West Bank people just can't take it anymore, and the
resistance continues. and we're going to talk about that
with grants with grant. Welcome back to fresh points,
tell us about first of all, can you prove that Israel
has a renegade nuclear weapons program? How do we know
they do they?
Grant Smith: We did prove that. We
sued under the Freedom of Information Act report and got
a Department of Defense report a couple of years ago
showing that they had all of the facilities and active
programs to manufacture nuclear weapons. It's been
confirmed by President Jimmy Carter, and it's also been
released in a CIA report from 1974 about not only the
nuclear weapons that they have, but also the range of
the Jericho missiles at that time, they could deliver
those nuclear weapons.
So there's really no question that
Israel has nuclear weapons. The real question is, and
this is something that the Institute for Public Accuracy
was interested in, Is the two laws, but one in
particular, laying around, why is it that members of
Congress who voice opposition to what's going on with
the use of US weapons against Gaza, which is you
correctly state, is an extremely concentrated parcel of
humanity, which is pretty much locked down from moving,
whether it's by sea or land or air, why is it that these
tools to block such weapons transfers, we can't really
call them weapons sales, aren't being used, particularly
by the squad... More
Audio Download
Could
Congress Cut off Funding to Israel by Acknowledging its
Nuclear Weapons?
Institute for Public Accuracy - 5/20/2021
Many media outlets are reporting that members of “the
Squad” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, as
well as other members of Congress including Pramila
Jayapal, are trying to “block a $735 million arms sale
to Israel.”
But Grant Smith, author of
Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, states
that members of Congress who have been critical of
Israel “won’t use the tools available to them.”
Specifically, he states “there are legal avenues to
challenge the entire $3.8 billion of U.S. taxpayer funds
that Israel gets every year.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu cited Smith’s work recently in a
piece published by The Guardian: “Joe Biden should end
the U.S. pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear
weapons.” Tutu challenged Biden to break with past U.S.
administrations and acknowledge Israel’s undeclared
nuclear weapons arsenal. Wrote Tutu, who chaired the
South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
“There are few truths more critical to face than a
nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid
government.”
Grant notes: “there are laws already on the books that
call for a cutoff of aid to nuclear proliferators.”
More at Institute for Public Accuracy
Virginia
About to Subsidize a Massive Israeli Fish Farm
Will Virginia counties again be left holding the bag?
...But, as with many other VIAB projects, the question
remains as to whether the designated Israeli company has
the expertise to actually execute.
In December, AquaMaof was sued for $25 million by
Aquatech Fisheries based in the Negev in Israel. The
lawsuit accuses AquaMaof of “disgraceful conduct” and
acting in a “blatantly unprofessional manner.” Aquatech
contracted with AquaMaof to build a $30 million facility
to grow snapper (sea bream). In less than a year, nearly
a million fish died in the facility, a mortality blamed
on AquaMaof’s “many failures and defects.” Because of
AquaMaof’s “lack of transparency” concealing materials,
“failures and defects,” it did not function as required
by the performance parameters set out in the agreement.
Project Jonah has never built or operated a salmon
facility as large as what is proposed in Virginia,
preferring to start very small and expand. Project Jonah
has also committed to performance parameters with state
funders.
Project Jonah has promised to spend $198,370,000 in
capital expenditures, create 218 new jobs with an annual
wage far in excess of regional averages, at $59,133.
However, the entities responsible for “clawing back”
grants and loans made to VIAB projects have shown little
willingness to do so.
Read more at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
‘Abraham
Accords’ Discredit the US
Corrupt side deals and more payoffs to Israel - 5/3/2021
...It is doubtful the US would have recognized Moroccan claims over Western Sahara if Israel and its US lobby had not gotten involved. AIPAC is now quickly advancing relations operating almost as a "shadow" US State Department. On May 6, AIPAC will hold a three-way video conference between Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita and Israel’s Minister of National Infrastructure, Energy and Water and the Israeli Ministry of Defense and an official from Nobel Energy which is developing liquid natural gas from the Israeli Leviathan fields. AIPAC has ramped up Abraham Accord direct lobbying expenditures over the past three quarters as a top priority and it is no wonder why. Most of the proposed US expenditures on the Trump-era "peace" accords were destined to accrue mostly to Israeli recipients.
An opaque fund arranged by the US International
Development Finance Corp based in Israel received 25
applications and chose 15 projects for funding. By
September of 2020, Israel had three active projects
totaling $580 million in US backed loans. In 2019, DFC
committed $480 million to two "Egyptian projects" –
except they were not truly projects accruing to Egyptian
interests but rather schemes to transport and sell
Israeli liquid natural gas from the Leviathan fields
being developed by Noble Energy. Morocco is now surely
in line for even more US taxpayer – backed Israeli
energy export projects.
The plurality of Americans would cut aid to Israel after
compelling studies released by Israel’s B’Tselem about
its apartheid practices and more recently Human Rights
Watch. The White House has already dismissed those
findings. But even as it touts itself as a leader in
racial justice, the unconditional support the Biden
administration and Congress give Israel are actions that
speak far louder than words.
Read more at
Antiwar.Com
Session 2 Complete - "End U.S. Support for Israeli
Apartheid?" on 4/24/2021
Individual speaker videos https://www.israelapartheidcon.org/session-2
Session 1
Complete Video - "End U.S. Support for Israeli Apartheid?" -
4/17/2021
Individual speaker videos and transcripts https://www.israelapartheidcon.org/session-1
Israeli
Attack on Iran Nuclear Facility Aims to Disrupt
US-Iranian JCPOA Talks
Just as Israeli Spying and Leaking about Secret Obama
Administration Talks Aimed to Disrupt Original
Negotiations
4/15/2021
Expert
Speakers to Discuss Israel, its U.S. Lobby and Apartheid
April 17 & 24
PR Newswire, 4/12/2021
WASHINGTON, April
12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Experts will
speak and take questions at the only annual
national conference challenging the Israel lobby's
repressive agenda while proposing better alternatives
for America.
IsraelApartheidCon is
solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust,
publisher of the Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, and
the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).
Celebrated Palestinian author Susan
Abulhawa reveals
how U.S. taxpayers and readers are beginning to
understand that their tax dollars are supporting ethnic
cleansing and apartheid.
Palestinian writer and analyst Sumaya
Awad warns
of the danger of Facebook's effort to suppress
criticisms of Zionism by deeming it equivalent to hate
speech or anti-Semitism, and her successful campaign
against censorship.
Rev. Alex
Awad describes
how Palestinian evangelicals are successfully working to
stop the spread of Christian Zionist biblical
misinterpretations in many U.S. churches.
Congressman Brian
Baird (1999-2011)
describes how Israel and
its U.S. lobby assert authority over Congress, Israel's use
of U.S. weapons and equipment in Gaza—including the 2003
killing of his constituent Rachel Corrie—and proposes
critical actions voters can take to help elect leaders
who will approach these issues in an open-minded way.
South African professor John
Dugard provides
insight into the international community's disparity in
its treatment of South
Africa and Israel for
applying substantially similar policies, and the
prospects and best approaches for ending Israeli
apartheid.
Richard Falk, former
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied
Palestine (2008-2014), will comment on B'Tselem's
apartheid report and Israel's 2018
Basic Law that gives preferential status to Jews.
Zaha Hassan, a
human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, outlines how the
Biden administration can break the Middle
East peace impasse by adopting a
rights-based—rather than an Israel and
its lobby based—approach as the center of its strategy.
Historian and author Walter
Hixson explains
why until the monolithic Israel lobby
is neutralized, there will never be peace in the Middle
East, drawing on insights from his new
book, Architects
of Repression.
Radio host and Antiwar.com editorial director Scott
Horton details
how Israel and
its U.S. lobby were key proponents of the disastrous
2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and
today are virtually alone in supporting a U.S. war on
Iran, drawing on research from his new book, Enough
Already.
Professor Robin
D.G. Kelley will
discuss the current state of resisting Israel and
its lobby's efforts on campus, the parallels between South
Africa and the movement toward Palestinian
liberation, and how the Black Lives Matter and the
Palestinian grassroots movements work together.
Tom Suárez, author
of the 2016 book State
of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, will
discuss the recently issued Jerusalem Declaration on
Antisemitism (JDA).
Journalist and Mondoweiss.net co-founder Philip
Weiss delivers a
roundup on J Street and his key reflections about the
effectiveness of liberal Zionism as revealed in its most
significant annual
policy conference.
UN correspondent Ian
Williams provides
a brief history of both Republican and Democratic
administrations' sycophantic relations with Israel and
how this relationship affects U.S. policies toward the
UN and international law.
Investigative journalist Asa
Winstanley explores
the similarities and differences between Labour Friends
of Israel in
the U.K. and the Democratic Majority for Israel in
the U.S., the purpose they serve, and the recent
sabotage and purge of major progressive leaders like Jeremy
Corbyn who have spoken out in support of
Palestinian human rights.
Get more information at www.IsraelApartheidCon.org and
register online at Eventbrite.
Israel
Targeting of Iran the Result of U.S. Backing, Refusal to
Acknowledge Its Nuclear Weapons
Institute for Public Accuracy - 4/12/2021
Ronnie Kasrils was Minister for
Intelligence Services in South Africa from 2004 to 2008
and was a leading member of the African National
Congress during the apartheid era.
He said today: “Israel is once again acting
criminally as the hand behind the recent attack on an
Iranian vessel in the Gulf and now as The New York
Times reports: ‘Blackout
Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli
Sabotage.’ …
“There can be little doubt that
this attack on Iran is calculated to damage the
prospects for a wider peace, seeming to sabotage the
talks in Vienna about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action on Iran which have started on a positive note in
Vienna. [The New York Times reported Friday: “Iran
Nuclear Talks Start on Positive Note in Vienna.”]
“Israel is granted an effective
green light for its illegal actions and dangerous war
mongering whilst the U.S. government has time and again
backed it. Just a few months ago South Africa’s emeritus
Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, urging incoming President
Biden, to end the USA’s ‘pretence over Israel’s secret
nuclear weapons’ and that ‘the refusal of [the] U.S.
administration to even acknowledge Israel’s massive
nuclear weapons arsenal threatens the region and indeed
the planet’.” See piece by Tutu in The Guardian: “Joe
Biden Should End the U.S. Pretence over Israel’s
‘Secret’ Nuclear Weapons: The cover-up has to
stop — and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country
with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.”
Kasrils added: “All this reminds us in South Africa that
Israel worked with the apparethid government to enable
it to develop its nuclear weapons. Such proliferation
violates U.S. and international law, and should result
in a cutoff of billions in U.S. taxpayer funding, which
enables Israel to destabilise the Middle East and
threaten even nuclear war, whilst it continues to
brutally oppress the Palestinian people. The USA, and
Western powers, allows Israel to act with chilling
impunity and are therefore complicit in its crimes.” He
wrote the piece “I
Fought South African Apartheid. I See the Same Brutal
Policies in Israel” for The Guardian.
Grant F. Smith is director of
the Washington, D.C.-based Institute
for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and recently
wrote the piece “Biden
Could Reverse Six Harmful Israel Policies… With the Only
Power That Stops Israel’s Lobby.”
He said today: “During the
Obama administration, Israel and its U.S. lobby did
everything they could to sabotage the JCPOA, including
spying on secret negotiations and coordinating
opposition in the U.S. where the majority of Americans
supported the deal.
“Archbishop Desmond Tutu called
on the Biden administration to be forthright about the
Middle East’s leading state sponsor of nuclear
proliferation — Israel. Only by reentering the JCPOA and
negotiating for a Middle East nuclear free zone — by
dismantling Israel’s nuclear arsenal — will the U.S. be
truly serving as an honest broker in the region.”
New Book - Architects of Repression: How Israel and Its Lobby Put Racism, Violence and Injustice at the Center of US Middle East Policy - 4/7/2021
This
book offers a compelling history of the most powerful
lobby acting on behalf of a foreign government in all of
American history. The book puts to rest any doubt as to
whether the Israel lobby has played and continues to
play the crucial role in enabling aggression, the
suppression of Palestinian rights, and the failure to
achieve a comprehensive Middle East peace accord.
Rooted in archival evidence and an abundant secondary
literature, Architects of Repression shows how AIPAC and
other Israel affinity groups deploy propaganda, target
campaign contributions, organize demonstrations, and
exert political pressure to manage public opinion - and,
especially, to influence the Congress. The massive
foreign aid that the United States has provided Israel -
far more than allocated to any other country and
dispersed on favorable terms reserved for Israel alone -
is only one of many enabling benefits the small Zionist
state has received over many decades from the most
powerful nation in the world.
For decades, as the book explains in depth, the Israel lobby has played the pivotal role as the US enabled Israel’s disdain for a negotiated settlement of the Middle East conflict; its contemptuous dismissal of the plight of Palestinian refugees; its cultivation of nuclear weapons in defiance of the global nuclear non-proliferation movement; its profusion of palpably racist, illegal and destabilizing Jewish-only settlements; its takeover of Jerusalem, much of the West Bank, and the Golan Heights; and its ongoing violent aggression, which has victimized Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as neighboring states notably Lebanon. In more recent years the Israel lobby launched a campaign to criminalize political engagement and freedom of speech by equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Hixson convincingly reveals that there will never be peace in the Middle East until the monolithic Israel lobby is neutralized.
Expert reviews
--Juan Cole, Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan.
"A devastating, learned, brilliantly narrated study of how the extremities of US pro-Israeli policy came about and were maintained despite decades of severe Israeli crimes victimizing the Palestinian people as a whole in what had been their native country. Essential reading for anyone willing expose themselves to inconvenient truths that definitively depict one of the darkest chapters in America's foreign policy."
--Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, is the former United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur in the Occupied Territories.
"If you ever wondered what the USA role in the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people is, you need to read this book. If you ever wondered how the Israeli lobby in the USA corrupted the American foreign policy towards Palestine and beyond, you need to read this book. This book analyses in a clear narration, based on solid analysis and documentation, how this corrupted and vicious American policy, culminated in the Trumpian era. This book points clearly to all the culprits who bred racism, violence and injustice in the USA and inflicted this unholy trinity on Palestine and its people."
--Ilan Pappé is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.
An IRmep publication. Now available in print, eBook and audio book format.
Israel
is an apartheid state so US should stop aid, say
Americans in poll
4/1/2021
...Carried out by IRmep earlier in March, the poll asked
whether, in light of the B'Tselem report, Israel should
be a leading recipient of US aid. Of those who
responded, 38.1 per cent said that Israel should not be
a leading recipient of aid. Just 33 per cent said that
it should continue to receive $3.8 billion per annum
from Washington.
The differences are starker when looked at on a regional
basis: 43.4 per cent of respondents from the north-east
of the US, 39.1 per cent from the mid-west and 36.2 per
cent from the west said that such a level of US aid
should stop. With 36.1 per cent, those in the American
south are the most likely to want aid to Israel to
continue.
The poll was carried out in advance of the
annual
IsraelLobbyCon conference on 17 and 24 April, which
this year has the theme "End
US Support for Israeli Apartheid?" IRmep and the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs are
co-organising the event to "explore[s] the latest
research, innovations and tactics for countering the
Israel lobby's damaging policies in the US and around
the globe."
IRmep's poll is the
latest indication that, increasingly, American citizens
appear to believe that systemic discrimination and
apartheid by the settler-colonial state should have
consequences. Successive US governments, however,
continue to think otherwise. Read more at
Middle East Monitor.
Poll:
Americans Say Israel Should Not be a Leading Recipient
of U.S. Aid Given Evidence of Apartheid
IRmep Polls - 03/31/2021
IRmep Poll: “A major Israeli human rights nonprofit says apartheid is rampant inside Israel & territories it occupies. Should Israel continue to be the leading recipient of U.S. foreign aid?”
BTselem found growing apartheid inside Israel and
controlled territories.Given that reality, a 38.1
percent plurality of Americans say Israel should not be
a leading U.S. aid recipient. Our
upcoming conference focuses on Israel, its U.S.
lobby, and the apartheid question.
Israeli NGO B'Tselem’s January 2021 report, “A regime of
Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid,” repeated claims
made for many years by Palestinian and regional
researchers as well as travelers to the region. Israel
not only operates a de facto apartheid regime within
territories it militarily controls, it also has
implemented a robust apartheid system domestically.
Read more at the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Poll data
‘Cut
Aid Over Israeli Apartheid’ Say Americans: Poll
Israel’s U.S. lobby rejects the label - 3/30/2021
...The documented evidence and conclusions in the B’Tselem report are compelling: Israel and the territories it occupies already form an apartheid regime. East Jerusalem and the West Bank have already been "annexed in practice." Palestinians, whether citizens of Israel or not, do not have the same rights as Jewish Israeli citizens. Discrimination is observable and endemic. No matter where they live, Israel affords Palestinians "a different package of rights" than Jewish Israelis. The "two-state solution" if it ever was viable, is dead.
While the report made a small splash in January, U.S. news media interest and follow up quickly tailed off. As is the norm, no mainstream U.S. pollster surveyed the American taxpayers who subsidize Israel and whose government supports the regime commercially, diplomatically while lavishing secret intelligence and military support how they viewed the situation.
Between March 22-25 IRmep asked a representative sample
of 2,194 American adults through Google Surveys whether
– given the B’Tselem report – Israel should be a leading
US aid recipient. A 38.1 percent plurality said it
should not. In fielding the question, the answer order
was randomly reversed and the resultant sample bias was
5.7 percent.
A plurality of Americans appear to believe, unlike their
government, that systemic discrimination witnessed by
credible, local observers should have consequences. Read
more at
Antiwar.com
Poll data
Listen in at the
Scott Horton Show.
Conference
on the Israel Lobby and
Apartheid April 17 & 24,
2021
The 2021 virtual edition of the Israellobbycon annual
series.
WASHINGTON, March
22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A
major Israeli human rights organization has
declared apartheid is rampant both inside Israel and
in the territories Israel occupies.
The web-based conference "End
US Support for Israeli Apartheid?"
considers whether the
United States should now cut off aid to Israel,
or make any such future assistance conditional on
negotiation of a genuine peace settlement, respect for
Palestinian human rights, and adherence to international
law.
IsraelApartheidCon is solely sponsored by the American
Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, and
the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep).
Wrapping around the annual meeting of the Israel lobby
group J Street, IsraelApartheidCon will
address U.S. financial support of Israel,
the strengths and weaknesses of "liberal" lobby groups
like J Street, prospects for a one- or two-state
solution, and the progress of free speech organizations,
the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement and
other forms of resistance, including solidarity between
Palestinian activism and the Black Lives Matter
movement.
While Congress wrangles over modest emergency pandemic relief for
Americans, it obediently gives the nation of Israel $3.8
billion annually—and even more covert
aid—with barely a whisper of debate.
Any member of Congress who might question Washington's annual
subsidy for Israeli militarization knows that he or she
will incur the wrath of the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Israel lobby
groups.
The lobby patrols the Congress to ensure that Israel,
a small country of some nine million people, remains by
far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance
since World War II. U.S. aid enables Israeli apartheid,
new settlements in illegally occupied territories and
ongoing violent repression of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, American citizens who question illegal Israeli
policies and engage in nonviolent protest movements such
as BDS are accused of being anti-Semites, and their free
speech rights threatened.
Join us online to hear expert speakers discuss how Americans can
push back against costly and harmful Israel lobby
programs and corruption. View upcoming speaker
announcements at www.IsraelApartheidCon.org and
register online at Eventbrite.
IsraelApartheidCon does
not replace or substitute the rescheduled conference "Transcending
the Israel Lobby at Home & Abroad" to be
held at the National Press Club on March
2 and 3, 2022. 2022 conference
speaker information and tickets are available at https://IsraelLobbyCon.org/2022-conference.
The
2021 virtual edition of
the IsraelLobbyCon
annual series
End US
Support for Israeli
Apartheid?
April 17 & 24, 2021
For speaker and program
updates visit
www.IsraelApartheidCon.org
While Congress wrangled
over modest emergency
pandemic relief for
Americans, the nation of
Israel receives $3.8
billion annually—and
even more covert
aid—with barely a
whisper of debate. Any
member of Congress who
might question the
annual U.S. subsidy for
Israeli militarization
knows that he or she
will incur the wrath of
AIPAC and other Israel
lobby groups. The lobby
patrols the Congress to
ensure that Israel, a
small country of some
nine million people,
remains by far the
largest recipient of
U.S. foreign assistance
since World War II.,
U.S,. aid enables
Israeli apartheid, new
settlements in illegally
occupied territories and
ongoing violent
repression of
Palestinians. Meanwhile,
American citizens who
question illegal Israeli
policies and engage in
nonviolent protest
movements such as BDS
(boycott, divestment and
sanctions) are accused
of being anti-Semites,
and their free speech
rights threatened.
This web-based
conference considers
whether the United
States should cut off
aid to Israel or make
any such future
assistance conditional
on negotiation of a
genuine peace
settlement, respect for
Palestinian human
rights, and adherence to
international law.
Wrapping around the
annual meeting of the
Israel lobby group J
Street, the webinar will
address U.S. financial
support of Israel, the
strengths and weaknesses
of “liberal” lobby
groups like J Street,
prospects for a one- or
two-state solution, and
the progress of free
speech organizations,
the BDS movement and
other forms of
resistance, including
solidarity between
Palestinian activism and
the Black Lives Matter
movement.
Register on Eventbrite
Flashpoints
with Dennis Bernstein on
KPFA - Is Israel the
Middle East's leading
state sponsor of nuclear
proliferation? -
2/1/2021
How does Israel avoid IAEA inspections of its nuclear weapons development sites while Iran undergoes continual inspection? What role does the Israel lobby play in threatening to defund the IAEA if Israel isn't given preferential treatment? What are six Trump administration policies that Israel and its lobby precipitated that should be immediately reversed? Audio file.
Biden Could Reverse Six Harmful Israel Policies...with the only power that stops Israel’s lobby - 1/20/2021
Public confrontations with the Israel lobby’s systemic
encroachments are the only means for politicians to beat
it. In 2020 Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum
stopped a massive coordinated Israel lobby media
smear campaign in its tracks by accurately labeling
AIPAC as a “hate group.” Biden has the power to do the
same, but unfortunately his entire career has been in
servitude to injustice when it comes to Israel
Palestine.
The Biden administration assumes
power claiming it will reverse Trump administration
policies it claims are harmful to Americans and the rest
of the world. Biden will end the so-called Muslim
ban—Executive order 13769— on travelers from Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Somalia Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The US will
rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change and cancel
the Keystone XL pipeline. Biden will issue mask
mandates, extend moratoriums on evictions and even
rejoin the World Health Organization.
Absent from the announced Biden
100-day program are any proposed reversals of Israel
policies implemented by the Trump administration that
seriously harm the United States and rest of the world.
Rolling back those policies would require bucking the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which
closely coordinates its activities with the Israeli
government. One way to corral AIPAC would be to actually
enforce the 1962 Department of Justice order that AIPAC
register as an
Israeli foreign agent.
An easier and more proven tactic to
disentangle the U.S. from harmful Israel lobby policies
is going public with grievances. George H.W. Bush did it
when fighting to withhold loan guarantees to Israel
which was continuing to build settlements on Palestinian
land. Barack Obama also did it in a speech when he laid
out the facts. By opposing the JCPOA, or Iran nuclear
deal, Israel and its lobby were essentially demanding
that the U.S. go to war with Iran, claimed Obama.
Americans overwhelmingly agreed with him. If Israel and
its lobby decide to whip up another phony crisis, Biden
could immediately take it to the court of public opinion
rather than suffer in silence.
A long public and private battle
against AIPAC—which has become
increasingly belligerent over the decades—could
create breathing room for pursuing productive, rather
than exclusively Israeli, policies in the Middle East.
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