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THE INSIDE HISTORY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY Former top CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison give CounterPunchers the real scoop on the Israel lobby and precisely how powerful it is. Read how US presidents from Wilson, through FDR to Truman were manipulated by the Zionist lobby; how Israel bent LBJ, Reagan and Clinton to its purpose; how Bush's White House has been the West Wing of the Israeli government; how Washington's revolving doors send full-time Israel lobbyists from think-tanks to the National Security Council and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. For all who want a true measure of the Lobby's power, the Christisons' 8-page dossier, exclusive to CounterPunch newsletter subscribers, is a MUST read. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories June 13, 2006 Jennifer Van
Bergen June 12, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Patrick Cockburn Mike Marqusee Lee Sustar Robert Fisk Michael J. Smith Felice Pace Jennifer Loewenstein Website of the Day
June 10 / 11,
2006 Robert Fisk Diane Christian Joe Allen Ralph Nader Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin /
John Cox Dennis Perrin Greg Moses John Chuckman Michael J. Smith Roger Burbach Ira Moskowitz Sam Bahour Seth Sandronsky Michael Berg Kirsten Roberts Ron Jacobs Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the
Weekend
June 9, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Paul Craig Roberts Gary Leupp Eric Ruder Evelyn Pringle Mickey Z. Michael J. Smith Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
June 8, 2006 Chris Floyd Michael Dickinson Ron Jacobs William S. Lind Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Lloyd Williams Bill Christison Website of the Day
June 7, 2006 Dave Lindorff Sunsara Taylor John Walsh David MacMichael Mickey Z. Evelyn Pringle Myles Palmer Laura Ribeiro Website of the Day
June 6, 2006 Diane Christian Paul Craig Roberts Ralph Nader Norman Solomon Darmont / Genovali Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Subcomandante Marcos Patrick Cockburn Website of the Day
June 5, 2006 Bruce Jackson Chris Floyd Michael Neumann Heather Gray William Hughes David Swanson Alexander Cockburn Website of the Day
June 3 / 4, 2006 Robert Fisk James Petras Rosemary Radford Ruether Harry Clark Jeffrey St. Clair Ron Ridenour Ron Jacobs Fred Gardner Peter Montague John Walsh Greg Moses Sean Donahue Mike Whitney Dave Patten Ali Khan Robert Dotson,
MD Hammond Guthrie St. Clair / D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the
Day
June 2, 2006 Kathy Kelly Alan Maass Mickey Z. Dave Lindorff Chris Kutalik Sunsara Taylor Sam Husseini Mike Ferner Website of the
Day
June 1, 2006 Brian Cloughley David Peterson Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Mike Whitney Paul Rockwell Clifton Ross Kevin Zeese Website of the
Day
May 31, 2006 Dave Lindorff Joshua Frank Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz P. Sainath Ramzy Baroud Seth Sandronsky Mickey Z. Ralph Nader Jeffrey St. Clair Website of the Day
May 30, 2006 Lee Ballinger Jonathan Cook Gary Leupp John Ross Robert Jensen Michael Dickinson Michael Carmichael Tim Wise Harry Browne Website of the
Day
May 27 / 29,
2006 Paul Craig Roberts Kathleen Christison Kathy Kelly Christopher
Reed Lawrence R. Velvel Tom Barry Gary Leupp Col. Dan Smith Ron Jacobs Don Fitz Fred Gardner Peter Montague Raymond Garcia John Farley Seth Sandronsky Tia Steele Lenni Brenner Dr. Susan Block Scott Michael Perey Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Recipe of the
Weekend Website of the Weekend
May 26, 2006 Col. Douglas
MacGregor Brian J. Foley Michael Dickinson Missy Comley Beattie Pierre Tristam Joe Allen Kona Lowell Roger Burbach Website of the
Day
May 25, 2006 Les AuCoin Jeff Halper Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Bob Wing Elise Gould Robert Bryce Website of the Day
May 24, 2006 Michael Donnelly Patrick Cockburn Lucinda Marshall Dave Lindorff Shmuel Rosner Moshe Adler Heather Gray Pratyush Chandra Paul Craig Roberts Floyd Rudmin Website of the Day
May 23, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Sharon Smith Sunsara Taylor Joel Whitney Alice Cherbonnier Ron Jacobs Kristen Ess Patrick Cockburn Website of the
Day
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June 13, 2006 Power Structures in IsraelThe Secret of AuthorityBy YITZHAK LAOR A huge farce is being staged in the Israeli High Court of Justice. Every university in the country has joined an appeal of a ruling by the National Labor Court (which ordered Bar-Ilan University in April 2005 to reveal its procedure for appointing professors), and in the name of academic freedom, they are asking the court to uphold the secrecy of their minutes. The appeal asked the court to recognize the secrecy of these deliberations as a component of academic freedom, arguing that publicizing them would do irreversible harm to the academic system, its status and the reputation of Israeli academia. The court has yet to hand down its decision, but from the petition, it seems that the universities understood something the labor court did not want to understand: This is not America. Here, tenders are issued only for the record, and the record is valid only for the moment when what is written there is written. All the rest is strictly oral. Nowhere else is the appearance of knowledge dependent on the secrecy of the considerations of those who determine it, the way it is in the universities. And nowhere is this appearance undermined as severely as it is in prize committees outside of academia, to which academics bring their reputation for knowledge, but are exposed to outside criticism. The granting of the Sapir Prize to a young journalist, Ron Leshem, can teach us something about the importance of public deliberations. It could be that the prize's name suits it. After all, the culture of unrecorded decisions, and their results, can clarify how our lives are run. This culture is embodied by the legacy of Pinhas Sapir. The American model may be good for the business world, with its myriad competitors. But in our intellectual life, we continue to act like officials in an eastern European synagogue: What has been agreed upon in advance will not be recorded. Five judges chose a single novel out of three that had been published over the past year. The uproar that arose over their decision does not reflect the problematic nature of the system. No one asked about the other novels that made it into the final round, nor about the dozens that did not reach this stage. The chairman, Yitzhak Livni a man of great knowledge, great activity and many positions was the only one who liked Leshem's book. And therefore, the prize was ultimately awarded to a novel that most of the judges, according to a report in Sunday's Ha'aretz, did not like with the exception of the chairman, who has not been replaced for years. Why replace him? After all, we need someone who knows the oral tradition. The explanation given by Professor Dan Laor--a former dean of the humanities, meaning he has a history of discussions whose key points were never written down in the minutes--for the panel members' change of heart raises questions, to say the least. Livni's powers of persuasion seem bizarre. And doubts immediately arose about the nature of the relationship between chairman Livni--who earns money, among other things, from Channel 2 television's news program--and the author of the winning novel, Leshem, a deputy managing director of Channel 2 franchisee Keshet. This is certainly the place where an old and very cynical power structure, the university, intersects with a new and much stronger power structure, the electronic media. Here, there is no pretense of 'knowledge' or 'taste' Here, power rules. But here, things are also made public, to the point of endangering secrecy. And that is not the only innovation in our intellectual life. The newest players in the field of 'prize culture' are book publishers. Some of them now earn turnovers of millions of shekels, and their PR staff rushes about between the critics, literature supplements and, of course, prize committees. Anyone who misreads the new relationship between these power structures and the intellectual values of our life is making a grave error. There is seemingly no recourse for this type of subverted justice. Nevertheless, whether the High Court creates order in the places where thousands are trained in this system of decision-making ethics, or whether it refrains from doing so, there is no problem with instituting a new order in everything connected with literature prizes. Why not hold public deliberations? Let committee member Meir Wieseltier explain, in a session open to the public, why he considered Leshem's book better than others. Books are made of words. Decisions are also made of words, when they are explained. His judgment could interest the public. After all, it was Wieseltier who opened his poem, The Secret of Authority, with the line: 'When in the inner sanctum a purple seal is stamped.' But the most important thing has not yet been said about Leshem's reportage-cum-novel--and it would have been said if the discussion had been open: This novel returned the center of Hebrew prose to the days of 'shooting and crying,' to the days of 'might makes right,' to the Lebanon War as an inseparable part of Israel's wars of the few against the many.? Anyone who thought Ariel Sharon's rehabilitation would stop at the color of the etrog, and would not include the Lebanon War in culture, was, of course, naive. Power structures all include each other in the same gray color. Yitzhak Laor is an Israeli novelist who lives in
Tel Aviv.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |