Robert Gates

The Adoration of Bibi Netanyahu

It’s impossible to know what goes on in the Oval Office. All the public sees is photo-ops and scripted comments. Was Barack Obama’s adoration of the Israeli Prime Minister meant as a subtle manipulation? Was this “keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

If so, that would be good news for the U.S. provided he grasps that he’s been played for a fool—with the help of his top advisers. His political career is a product of the Chicago Outfit, including his presidency. Can he rise above that? I need to believe that he can.

What we witnessed this week at the White House was words of praise for the leader of a government that has strategically deceived the U.S. for more than six decades. Yet President Obama assured us that he now “trusts” a spokesman for Israel’s ultra-right Likud Party.

Was this presidential subtlety? Perhaps Obama praised “Bibi” Netanyahu a bit too much? Isn’t that what a commander-in-chief would say if he was trying to lull an Israeli leader into a false sense of security so he would misstep?

It’s not like Obama could just blurt out: “Hey Bibi, here’s the new deal. We’re going to endorse the one state solution, declare Jerusalem a cultural heritage site under U.N. protection, recover for Palestinians their occupied land and safeguard them with 30,000 troops that we’re airlifting in from Afghanistan. Oh, and we’re going to secure your nuclear arsenal—tomorrow.”

That may be too rational for such an emotional issue. After all, Americans have yet to sort facts from fiction when it involves “the promised land,” the Exodus mythology and the heroic saga of the long-suffering “Israelites” in search of a “homeland.”

Fools and Crooks

Should you get discouraged, try putting this duplicity in historical perspective. After all, Zionists were deceiving U.S. presidents long before this latest president was born. They duped Harry Truman into recognizing their extremist enclave as a legitimate state back in 1948. Much like Truman, Obama’s political pedigree traces its Chicago roots to organized crime.

The Missouri version of the Chicago Outfit was Kansas City’s Pendergast political machine. Its operatives profiled, picked and produced Truman, grooming him first as a county judge in the 1920s before placing him in the U.S. Senate in 1934.

He never won an election. Not really. Even his reelection as president in 1948 is traceable to the same trans-generational syndicate that brought Obama to political prominence six decades later. The only difference is the sophistication of their electoral operation.

In 1929, the Pendergast machine was represented by Johnny Lazio at the first-ever meeting of the National Crime Syndicate when it convened in Atlantic City. In 1931, 24 exclusive territories were allocated at a Jews-only conclave at the Franconia Hotel in Manhattan. Then as now, Chicago and New York were major nodes in this transnational network.

Zion in the White House

Like Republican G.W. Bush a half-century later, Democrat Harry Truman was an avid Christian Zionist who famously read the Bible cover-to-cover five times by age 15. Ministers in Missouri consulted the Bible-obsessed youngster on scripture.

In 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright named the State Department after Truman. That incident remains an inside joke in Israel because Truman is best known abroad as the U.S. president who rejected the advice of his Secretary of State George C. Marshall when the WWII general opposed U.S. recognition of the Zionist enclave as a legitimate state.

Marshall knew this entangled alliance would prove the undoing of U.S. national security. The Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Truman about the “fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders” and their plans for “Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.”

Thus the need—then as now—for Israeli leaders to deploy strategic duplicity.

In 1997, Albright announced an “epiphany” that she was Jewish. That personal revelation came only after she was named Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State. Dr. Glenn Olds, who had known her family since she was a teenager in Colorado, offered his candid assessment of her epiphany: “That is simply not believable.”

What can we believe? Who can we believe? Barack Obama?

What do Americans dare believe about this meeting between an Israeli Prime Minister and a White House occupant with a “Chicago” political lineage?

This much can be said with confidence: so long as Barack Obama adores their leaders, the Israelis will not assassinate him. Could that explain his Israel-first behavior? See: Will Israel Assassinate Barack Obama?

Duplicity as a Way of Life

Netanyahu spoke at length of his concern about a worldwide movement to de-legitimize Israel. As a lawyer, Obama knows that this concern conveniently ignores the fraud by which that “legitimacy” was recognized—by a political product of organized crime.

Russian oligarchs share a similar concern—and may meet a similar fate. They are waiting for an incredulous world to recognize as “private property” the fruits of their massive fraud. Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev estimates that $1 trillion in wealth was stripped from their economy. The impact fell hardest on pensioners and children.

Stolen property does not become “legit” simply because you hold onto it. Likewise for land taken under cover of what Americans were induced to believe was a 1967 “war.” In truth, that conflict was a long-planned Six-Day Land Grab.

To portray that armed taking as the rightful spoils of war is no more legitimate than the oligarchs defrauding Russia of untold riches under the guise of “privatization.” Six of the top seven richest oligarchs qualify for Israeli citizenship—in a nation whose population is less than two percent Ashkenazim.

As part of Tel Aviv’s typical psy-ops preceding a high-profile White House meeting, Americans were subjected to a public relations blitz. The day before, the Israeli military announced that a soldier was indicted for killing a Palestinian who was attempting to surrender while carrying a white flag. Here’s the catch: the indictment was not for murder but manslaughter.

Tel Aviv also announced proceedings against an officer who ordered the shelling of the entrance to a mosque, killing at least 15. But read the fine print: the charge was not murder but a simple rebuke.

Not wanting to appear overly generous after these magnanimous gestures, Netanyahu declined to extend a “partial 10-month building freeze.” Thumbing his nose at U.S. leaders, he refused to mention even the possibility of a two-state solution.

Then came the Obama Adoration—on nationwide television. What was he thinking?

Tough Guy Obama

Lest someone charge that Barack Obama failed to drive a hard bargain, he promised that, after 43 years of Israeli occupation, proximity talks with the Palestinians may yet mature into direct negotiations!!! Of course that means Israel must first agree to cease the building of settlements on Palestinian land.

That’s a non-starter for the “Israelites” who consider themselves Chosen—by a god of their own choosing. That self-proclaimed status entitles them to take land that their G-D gave them thousands of years ago. No one could make this up; they truly do believe this. Truly.

Obama then declared a renewed commitment to the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship,” proclaimed again an “unshakable bond” with the Zionist enclave, and assured Tel Aviv there was no shift in U.S. policy on Israel’s nuclear arsenal, a stance profoundly out of synch with our professed support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Tehran take note.

Are you too looking for the silver lining in these otherwise dark developments?

Do you find yourself wondering for whom Barack Obama is working?

Are you confused about just whose interests he represents as our president?

You are not alone. No one is more concerned than U.S. military commanders.

The Obama Adoration meant even more bad news for senior Pentagon personnel. Obama’s behavior was particularly galling for those aware of the common pro-Israeli source of the phony intelligence that induced us to war on false pretenses.

How much longer will U.S. commanders be willing to order that Americans die for Jewish extremists? Knowing the depth of corruption and complicity within our civilian leadership, to whom do military commanders owe their allegiance?

When our command and control system is this corrupted at the top, what then for those who took an oath to defend this nation from all enemies, both foreign and domestic?

Has our entangled alliance with religious extremists eroded U.S. democracy from the inside out? Are our military leaders obliged by their Constitutional oath to challenge the remnants of democracy in order to restore it?

Untangling the Alliance

The Pentagon is not pleased that America’s inevitable showdown with Israel was delayed—yet again. Perhaps this is Obama’s version of the calm before the storm. Maybe—just maybe—No Drama Obama will emerge as the agent of change that he promised his supporters. Absent a dramatic shift in U.S.-Israeli relations, infamy could be his legacy.

Meanwhile Tel Aviv will resort to its two preferred strategies: outrage and entropy. We can expect another round of settlements. Or some killings. No one dares call them murders. Any provocation will do so long as the reaction enables the Israelites to be portrayed as victims.

The likelihood of an entropy strategy always lurks in the background. Obama was repeatedly reminded of the fragility of Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Its collapse would leave the U.S. with no government to negotiate. Though it’s difficult to imagine anything could be worse than Netanyahu, that outcome might well be. Tel Aviv knows this.

For Israeli war-planners, the force-multiplier effect is palpable. In practical game theory terms, the most right-wing parties in the Netanyahu coalition now shape U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. For the U.S. to maintain a stable Netanyahu government, our policies must please right-wing Likud stalwarts, including Israel’s ultra-orthodox extremists.

In short, George Marshall was correct. So was George Washington when he cautioned us against entangled alliances, particularly where, as here, there is a “passionate attachment.”

It gets worse.

After a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Likud Party leader announced that the U.S. pullout from Iraq could leave Israel vulnerable. Therefore, U.S. troops must provide security along the Jordan Valley as part of any final status agreement with the Palestinians.

What he failed to mention is that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon assured Obama’s predecessor that if the U.S. invaded Iraq, Israel would make peace with the Palestinians. That agreement is no longer mentioned.

Adding insult to six decades of grievous injury, the Israeli news service Haaretz published a next-day headline that read, “Israel won’t attack Iran without coordinating with the U.S.” That caption implies that Obama gave the blessing of the U.S. for an Israeli attack, ensuring that Americans can once again be portrayed as…guilty by association.

Anyone who believes that Israel wants peace fails to grasp how Israel wages war. Peace would preclude Zionism’s pursuit of its hegemonic agenda for the region. The Joint Chiefs cautioned Harry Truman against this alliance 62 long years ago.

Americans—and the U.S. military—have been played for the fool. For more than six decades, transnational organized crime has been setting our agenda in the region at a steadily rising cost in blood and treasure.

The adoration must end for U.S. national security to begin. The next few weeks will determine whether we have a fool or a leader as commander-in-chief.

Robert Gates

Will Israel Ensure that History Repeats Itself?

The lead-up to the first U.S.-Iran talks in three decades saw a replay of the same modus operandi that induced the U.S. and its allies to invade Iraq in March 2003. Then as now, the invasion of Iran is consistent with a regime change agenda for Greater Israel described in a 1996 strategy document prepared by Jewish-Americans for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As with Iraq, the threat of weapons of mass destruction is again marketed as a causa belli. As with Iraq, the claim is disputed by weapons inspectors and intelligence analysts. The Iraqi program had been shut down a dozen years before the invasion. In Iran, there is no evidence that uranium is being enriched beyond the low levels required for energy and medical purposes.

Reports of a “secret” processing plant failed to note that Iran suspended uranium enrichment from 2003 until 2005. Seeing no change in the political climate except more sanctions and more Israeli threats to bomb its nuclear sites, Iran began building and equipping a new facility.

As with Iraq, there is no direct threat to the U.S. As with Iraq, mainstream U.S. media focused not on Israel—the only nation in the region known to have nuclear weapons—but on Iran. Enrichment is relatively easy compared to the steps required to design, build and reliably deliver a nuclear warhead. Activity around each of those steps can be readily detected.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged that even if Iran were attacked, that does nothing to alter Iran’s nuclear prospects—except provoke them to develop the very weapons that the evidence suggests are not now being produced. Is this a calculated move to exert pressure on Tehran? Or to provoke them? Or is this a move by Washington to buy time from an “ally” that threatens an attack—with disastrous effects on U.S. interests and those of its genuine allies?

To catalyze a climate of insecurity among Jews, pro-Israelis periodically claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proposes to “wipe Israel off the map.” A correct translation confirms that what he urged is that “this occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time.” Akin to the widely sought demise of the oppressive Soviet regime, that proposal enjoys the support of many moderate, secular and non-Zionist Jews who have long recognized the threat that Jewish extremists pose to the broader Jewish community.

No one can explain why Iran, even if nuclear armed, would attack Israel with its vast nuclear arsenal estimated at 200-400 warheads, including several nuclear-armed submarines. In mid-July, Israeli warships deployed to the Red Sea to rehearse attacks on Iran. As in the lead-up to war with Iraq, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is again beating the war drums. This is the same adviser who, four days after 9-11, advised G.W. Bush to invade Iraq.

Citing Iran’s “covert” facility, Wolfowitz claims it is “clear that Iran’s rulers are pursuing nuclear weapons.…Time is running out.” Without a hint of irony, he argues that Iran (not Israel) “is a crucial test of whether the path to a nuclear-free world is a realistic one or simply a dangerous pipe dream.” In calling for “crippling sanctions,” Howard Berman, Jewish chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, expressed similar concerns as did Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, senior Republican on the Committee and also Jewish.

If pro-Israelis cannot induce a war with Iran, the ensuing stability will enable people to identify who fixed the intelligence that deceived the U.S. to invade Iraq. Only one nation possesses the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence to mount a covert operation over the lengthy period required to pre-stage, staff, orchestrate and successfully cover-up such an act.

The evidence points to the same network of government insiders and media proponents now hyping Iran. Who benefitted from war with Iraq? Who benefits from war with Iran? Not the U.S. or its allies unless, despite the evidence, Israel is viewed as an ally–rather than an enemy within.

Can the U.S. Muster a Breakthrough Strategy?

Like Afghanistan, Iran does not have a military solution. Nor does Iraq. Geopolitically, the greatest casualty of war in the region was the United States – its credibility tattered, its military overextended and its finances devastated by a debt-financed war that Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz projects could reach $3,000 billion. Compare that with the speedy exit and a $50 billion outlay that Wolfowitz assured policy-makers could be recovered from sales of Iraqi oil.

Those who induced that invasion persuaded Americans to commit economic and geopolitical hari-kari. No external force could have defeated the sole remaining super power. Instead the U.S. was deceived—by a purported ally—to defeat itself by an ill-advised reaction to the provocation of a mass murder on U.S. soil.

The only sensible and sustainable solution is one that serves unmet needs in the region while also restoring the credibility of the U.S. as a proponent of informed choice and free enterprise. While making transparent the common source of the deceit that induced the U.S. to war, policy-makers can also lay the foundation to preclude such duplicity in the future. That requires consultation among the U.S., its true allies and those nations in the region most affected by this treachery.

Only a design solution can counter today’s systemic sources of conflict, including the extremism fueled by extremes in education, opportunity, wealth and income. As with the fixed intelligence that induced the U.S. to war in Iraq, those sources of conflict are obscured by a compliant and complicit media with an undisclosed pro-Israeli bias.

A transnational network of think tanks could expose in real time how facts are displaced by what “the mark” can be deceived to believe. With the media dominance of pro-Israelis in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and other Western allies, that task must include the capacity to show how this deceit operates in plain sight yet, to date, with impunity. Absent such transparency, systems of governance reliant on informed consent will continue to be manipulated to their detriment by those who hide behind the very freedoms that such systems are meant to protect.

Running parallel with that transparency initiative must be an education program that deploys the best available technology to close the gaps in learning that sustain extremes in opportunity. Only a truly international effort can succeed in that essential task. Only trans-cultural education can preempt the mental manipulation that induced war in Iraq and now pursues war with Iran as proponents of The Clash of Civilizations gradually transform that concept into a reality.

What we now see emerging is yet another example of how wars are induced in the Information Age. Why would anyone expect modern warfare to be waged in any other way? As the common source of this duplicity becomes transparent, the solution will become apparent.

Lasting peace requires a Marshall Plan able to accelerate the transition to the Knowledge Society. This systemic challenge cannot be addressed absent a systemic strategy. The restoration of friendly and cooperative relations must include the practical steps required to heal this widening divide with education at the core.

Robert Gates

Anti-Zionists: The New Heretics

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

– George Santayana

How quickly we forget. With the Inquisition still fresh in memory, America’s Founders embraced democracy as a means to protect liberty from the manipulations of faith. That’s why facts were enshrined at the core of self-governance grounded in the rule of law. The duplicity at the heart of the U.S.-Israeli relationship puts that founding principle at risk.

For seven terrifying centuries, heretics were punished under canon law. In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was condemned for “grave suspicion of heresy” when he showed that the Sun—not the crown—was the center of the universe despite what the King’s subjects—with help from the Church—had been induced to believe.

With the merger of church and state in the 4^th Century Roman Empire, anyone daring to dispute papal authority—by challenging with facts the One True Faith—was condemned as both a heretic and an enemy of the state. That practice continues in modern times.

The New Heretics are those few who challenge America’s faith in its “special relationship” with an extremist enclave granted nation state recognition in 1948 by a Christian-Zionist president, Harry Truman. Critics of this enclave invite condemnation as “anti-Semites,” a modern form of social excommunication.

Defenders of the Zionist Faithful were forced to become more vigilant in monitoring this heresy after Israeli troops used U.S.-provided arms and munitions to kill more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza, one-third of them reportedly children.

That well-timed attack, planned for more than a year, was scheduled between Christmas and the January 20^th presidential inaugural. Within 48 hours of ending its assault, Israel had dispatched an army of bloggers to counter anti-Zionist websites. By early February, the Anti-Defamation League was bemoaning a “pandemic of anti-Semitism.” The massacre fueled outrage worldwide even as the ADL portrayed that anger as “anti-Semitism.”

By early March, Israeli policy was being described as a threat to international peace and security, a violation of international human rights and a crime against humanity. By associating the U.S.—its ally—with this behavior, the U.S.-Israeli “special relationship” fueled anti-American hatred, fanned the flames of extremism and set the stage for more terrorism. Meanwhile a wave of modern-day excommunications swept college campuses:

• At Hampshire College in Massachusetts, students urged the school to divest from firms whose operations support the Israeli occupation of Palestine. When Israeli policies were compared to apartheid-era South Africa, Zionist Law Professor Alan Dershowitz condemned the students as “rabidly anti-Israel” (enemies of the state).
• At Canada’s Ottawa College, Students Against Israeli Apartheid were prohibited from displaying a poster condemning Zionist policies that president Jimmy Carter had already condemned in his 2007 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
• At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Professor William Robinson (Jewish) was attacked as an anti-Semite in an ADL-coordinated silencing campaign. His heresy: sharing with students a photo-essay critical of Israeli policy that had circulated for weeks online. [See “Treason in Plain Sight?”: intifada-palestine.com/2009/07/03/treason-in-plain-sight/and “The ADL Thought Police:”: aljazeera.com/news/articles/42/The_ADL_thought_police.html]

Media-Manipulated Mindsets

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI attacked an Argentine cleric whose excommunication he had lifted. As head of the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict claimed he was unaware that Bishop Richard Williamson had challenged key facts of the Holocaust. When condemned by the Pontiff, Williamson apologized. The Vatican insisted he recant, a concept lifted directly from the Inquisition.

Critics suspect this early February dispute was meant to distract attention from the carnage in Gaza and create sympathy for Israel by evoking memories of the Holocaust. No media outlet mentioned that this German Pope, the first since 1523, previously led the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a direct descendant of the Church’s 16^th century tribunal, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition.

The fiercest condemnation of the bishop’s reluctance to recant came not from Rome but from Angela Merkel in Berlin who was elected German Chancellor in 2005. No media outlet mentioned that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.

While wielding a major opinion-shaping media outlet during Merkel’s ascendancy as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his media acquisition: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.” Rattner re-emerged as president Barack Obama’s auto industry “car czar” before resigning in mid-July due to a pension fund scandal.

To put these media-dependent developments in historical perspective requires a grasp of how—in the Information Age—warfare is waged not on a traditional battlefield but in the shared field of consciousness. In the public’s shared mindset—where consensus opinions are created, shaped and sustained—facts are routinely displaced with what “the mark” can be induced to believe.

That’s why national security agencies must monitor media czars such as Saban who is candid about using his influence to advance Zionist goals. In June 2006, a Saban-led group acquired Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. With Latinos the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S., Univision is critical to Israel’s ability to sustain its control of U.S. foreign policy. Univision is the fifth largest television network in the U.S., reaching 98% of Spanish-speaking households through 62 television stations, 90 affiliate stations and more than 2,000 cable affiliates. [See “How the Israel lobby took control of U.S. foreign policy.”: www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=124829&d=24&m=7&y=2009]

For a system of self-governance reliant on informed consent, it is difficult to overstate the threat to democracy when policy-making is filtered through the pro-Israeli bias of media-owning Zionists. In addition to emerging as a reliable EU advocate for Israeli policies, Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on a EU-wide warrant. A search of her phone records would doubtless uncover a discussion with a key supporter, Haim Saban.

Zionists and the lawmakers they groom are well positioned to advance a modern-day Inquisition—as when Bishop Williamson simultaneously faced arrest in Europe and expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.

The People In Between

In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a generic phrase to describe the most perilous combatants when waging what he called “unconventional warfare.” A former C.I.A. Director, he portrayed this enemy as “the people in between.” Between Galileo and the facts was Church doctrine deployed to displace science with beliefs or, in modern-day parlance, with consensus opinion. Between the German people and the ballot box was Haim Saban for whom the election of Angela Merkel was critical to Israel. Next is Univision.

To gain credence (believability) for the displacement of facts with beliefs requires that the public’s shared mental environment be fed a steady diet of supportive impressions. Thus the agenda-advancing assistance when “unrelated” events emerge in the same timeframe to reinforce the intended orthodoxy. For example, following the Israeli assault on Gaza, news reports in February included several high profile accounts, including:

• The suspension of U.K. diplomat Rowan Laxton for allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks while riding an exercise bike in a London gymnasium.
• Reports of police protection provided in Dubai to Andy Ram, an Israeli tennis star, reinforcing the media-induced narrative that Israelis were at risk.
• A White House announcement that the Obama administration would attend a planning session for a 2009 World Conference Against Racism but may boycott it.

These narrative-advancing impressions were reinforced by the release in 2008 of eight Holocaust-themed films, including The Reader starring Kate Winslet who received a high profile Academy Award for best actress in a leading role. She even joked about the influence wielded by pro-Israelis in Hollywood and popular culture. In a 2005 filming of Extras, a comedy series in which she played herself, an actor congratulated her on her role in a Holocaust-related film, to which she responded:

“I don’t think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It’s like, how many have there been? We get it. It was grim. Move on. No, I’m doing it because I’ve noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, [you're] guaranteed an Oscar. I’ve been nominated four times—never won. The whole world is going, ‘Why hasn’t Winslet won one?’ That’s it. That’s why I’m doing it. Schindler’s bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming out of their ass!”

Duplicity – From Antiquity to Modernity

Framers of the U.S. Constitution viewed democracy as a form of governance that resides not in a royal court or the papacy but in a mindset shared by its participants. Where else could self-governance reside? Thus the key role envisioned for media as an “in-between” domain essential to convey the facts required for informed consent. Absent widespread access to unbiased information, liberty would succumb to the exploitation of those skilled at preying on ignorance and beliefs. On that key point, the Framers were proven correct.

Thus the perils when those who mean to live free rely on media with an undisclosed bias. It is precisely such “people in between” that routinely displace facts with what an unsuspecting public (“the mark”) can be deceived to believe. In an Information Age, such fraudulent behavior is not akin to treason, that agenda-advancing duplicity is treason. Haim Saban is unusual only in conceding the pro-Israeli bias he brings to his media operations.

This duplicitous modus operandi works the same in modernity as in antiquity. The impact on informed consent is identical regardless whether the media-enabled deceit is a false belief in Iraqi WMD, a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets, or a shared opinion that this Zionist enclave is a democracy and an ally rather than what the oft-recurring fact patterns confirm: an enemy within.

Such treachery is at least as old as the use of canon law to silence critics of Church doctrine. The only modern component of this deceitful craft is the global reach of contemporary media and its capacity to manipulate minds and emotions on an unprecedented scale.

A 1578 handbook for inquisitors explained that its harsh penalties were “for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.” The New Heretics chronicle the costs of the U.S.-Israel relationship in blood, treasure, insecurity and credibility. Those who yearn for freedom from such manipulation can no longer afford America’s entangled alliance with an extremist enclave notorious for waging war by way of deception

Robert Gates

The New Heretics

The New Heretics

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
– George Santayana

How quickly we forget. With the abuses of the Inquisition still fresh in memory, the Founders embraced democracy to protect liberty from the manipulations of belief. That’s why facts were enshrined at the core of self-governance and the rule of law. The duplicity at the core of the U.S.-Israeli relationship has put that founding principle at risk.

For seven terrifying centuries, heretics were punished under canon law. In 1633, Italian astronomer Galileo was condemned for “grave suspicion of heresy” when he showed that the sun—not the crown—was the center of the universe. Since the merger of church and state in the Roman Empire of the 4th century, anyone who dared dispute papal authority—by challenging faith with facts—was condemned as both a heretic and an enemy of the state.

Today’s heretics are those who challenge our faith in the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States. To criticize Israel risks condemnation as an “anti-Semite.” Defenders of this relationship were forced to become more vigilant after Israeli troops used U.S.-provided arms and ammunition to kill 1,330 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 346 children.

That attack, planned for more than a year, was scheduled between Christmas and the presidential inaugural. Within 48 hours of ending its assault, Israel had dispatched an army of bloggers to counter anti-Zionist websites. By early February, the Anti-Defamation League was bemoaning a “pandemic of anti-Semitism” as the massacre fueled outrage worldwide.

By early March, Israeli policy was being described as a threat to international peace and security, a violation of international human rights, a crime against humanity and a form of apartheid. By associating the U.S. with such behavior, this special relationship fueled anti-American hatred, fanned the flames of radicalization and set the stage for more terrorism.

At Hampshire College in Massachusetts, protesters urged that their school divest from firms whose operations support Israel’s four-decade siege of Palestine. When students compared Zionist policies to apartheid-era South Africa, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz condemned them as “rabidly anti-Israel” (enemies of the state).

At Ottawa College in Canada, debate was stifled when Students Against Israeli Apartheid were prohibited from displaying an anti-war poster condemning Zionist policies that president Jimmy Carter condemned in his 2007 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The People In Between

Meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI attacked a cleric whose excommunication he had lifted. The Pontiff claimed he was unaware that Bishop Richard Williamson had challenged key facts of the Holocaust. When condemned by the Vatican, Williamson apologized. The Vatican insisted he recant. Critics claimed the high profile dispute was staged to distract attention from the carnage in Gaza.

Left unmentioned in mainstream media was the fact that this German Pope, the first since 1523, previously led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a direct descendant of the Vatican’s 16th century tribunal, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition.

The fiercest condemnation of the bishop’s reluctance to recant came not from Rome but from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. No media outlet reported that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.

As a major opinion-shaping influence in the years preceding Merkel’s emergence as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his client’s acquisition six years ago: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.”

To put these media-fueled events in historical perspective requires a grasp of how—in the Information Age—warfare is waged not on a conventional battlefield but in the shared field of consciousness. In that mental domain—where consensus opinions are created, shaped and sustained—facts are routinely displaced by what people can be induced to believe.

Thus the threat to democracy when media-owning Zionists influence policy-making—as when Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on an EU-wide warrant. Or when Zionists support a modern-day Inquisition—as when Williamson faced expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.

In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a phrase to describe the most perilous combatants when waging unconventional warfare. A former C.I.A. Director, he called them “the people in between.” Between Galileo and the facts was Church doctrine determined to displace science with beliefs or, in media parlance, with consensus opinion.

To lend credence (believability) to the displacement of facts with faith requires that the mental environment be saturated with supportive impressions and emotions. Thus the curious correlation when seemingly unrelated events emerged in this same time frame to reinforce the prevailing pro-Israeli orthodoxy, including:

• The high profile suspension of U.K. diplomat Rowan Laxton for allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks while riding an exercise bike in a London gymnasium.

• The high profile protection provided in Dubai to Andy Ram, an Israeli tennis star.

• The announcement that the London Evening Standard’s new owner, Russian-Ashkenazi oligarch Alexander Lebedev, will expand his media empire with a new radio station in Moscow.

• The announcement that the Obama administration will boycott the 2009 World Conference Against Racism after successful lobbying by the Israel lobby who knew that the Zionist state’s treatment of Arabs would be portrayed as racist.

These impressions were reinforced by the release in 2008 of eight Holocaust-based films.

The Displacement of Informed Choice

The Framers envisioned democracy as a form of governance that resides not in a royal court but in a mindset shared by its participants. Where else could it reside? Thus the key role envisioned for media to ensure widespread participation in a system of informed consent. Absent widespread access to unbiased information, the blessings of liberty they knew would eventually succumb to those who prey on ignorance and beliefs.

Thus the risks to self-governance when freedom relies on broadcasters with an undisclosed bias. It is precisely those “people in between” that routinely displace facts with what an unsuspecting public can be deceived to believe.

That fact-displacing modus operandi works the same in modernity as in antiquity. The impact on informed consent is identical regardless whether the deceit is a belief in Iraqi WMD, a consensus faith in the infallibility of unfettered financial markets, or the widely shared opinion that the Zionist state is a democratic ally rather than an enemy within.

Faith-based treachery is as ancient as the use of canon law to silence critics of Church doctrine. The only modern component of this duplicity is the reach of contemporary media and its capacity to manipulate the shared mental state on an unprecedented scale. Freedom can no longer afford America’s entangled alliance with a nation known to routinely wage war by way of deception.

A 1578 handbook for inquisitors explained that its harsh penalties were “for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.” The new Evil Doers are those who dare document the costs of the U.S.-Israel relationship in blood, treasure, insecurity and hard-earned credibility.

March 5, 2009