Paul Craig Roberts on Freeman

The Charles Freeman Ordeal and the Decline of American Power

Jews, Israelis, and Israeli Jews do not speak with one voice on matters of Israeli policy

Chas Freeman nails it on Zakaria's show. Zakaria did his best to discredit Freeman, but I believe Freeman got the best of the interview:

FREEMAN: Well, the "Israel lobby" is a term that's in general use. I think it isn't a terribly accurate name. It probably should be called the Likud lobby, or the Yisrael Beiteinu lobby. It's the far right wing of the Jewish community here in alliance with the far right wing in Israel.

And I don't think that I've been in any respect excessively or unreasonably critical of Israel. I think I have been critical of Israeli policy. And the atmosphere is such in this country now, that whereas Israelis in Israel routinely criticize policies they think may prove to be suicidal for their country, those who criticize the same policies here for the same reasons are subject to political reprisal.
...
ZAKARIA: Do you feel that the lobbies, the groups that reflect American Jews' concerns about Israel, that may reflect Israeli policy, have too much influence in public policy in the United States today?

FREEMAN: Well, I think the right-wing elements that I referred to, which are loosely called the Israel lobby -- as I said, I'd prefer the term Likud lobby -- in fact have a hammerlock on both public discussion and policy.

And the objective of their campaign against me was to reinforce that hammerlock, to enforce the taboo against any critical discussion of Israeli policies and what they might mean for Israel's future or the future of the United States as affected by Israel's future; to ensure that this group -- which is a very well-organized group, as can be readily discerned from their messages crowing about how they organized this campaign -- to reinforce their veto power over appointments to the government; to ensure that analysis was not value- free, but pro-Israel in orientation and, to some extent, anti-Arab; and finally, to ensure that the policy process remains supportive of whatever it is that whoever is in power in Israel demands.

In searching for these transcripts I was reminded of this little blast from the past. On June 8, Zakaria asked Henry Kissinger: "Is Barack Obama sufficiently pro-Israel for Jewish voters?"
Very revealing.

AIPAC's Waterloo?

They may have gone a bridge too far this time...

Is the Israel Lobby Running Scared?

Or Killing a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys

by Robert Dreyfuss

"Sanctity of Contracts" you say??

"Sanctity of Contracts," "Nation of Laws" .... Whatever you say dear prof. Summers....

The Sanctity of AIG's Contracts

by Glenn Greenwald

A Time for Falcons?

TomDispatch wonders:

Shouldn't somebody consider, for instance, whether the principle found in so many individual martial arts -- that defense, and even striking reserves of power, can be found not in meeting force with blunt force, but in giving way before force -- might apply to more collective situations? Don't such groups as the Taliban and al-Qaeda feed off of, thrive and recruit off of, military action against them as well as the human destruction and the attention that goes with it?

Shooting Film and Crying

Ursula Lindsey

March 2009

(Ursula Lindsey is an M.A. candidate in Near Eastern studies at New York University. She writes on Middle Eastern arts and culture on the blog www.arabist.net.)

Freeman on why he withdrew:

I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.... I am saddened by what the controversy and the manner in which the public vitriol of those who devoted themselves to sustaining it have revealed about the state of our civil society. It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.