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Israel : Influence on US Peace Movement and US Mid-East Policies

Comment by Larry Ross, July 10, 2007

This is one of many articles I see dealing with the influence of Israel on US Mid-East policies, and how deeply it's agents and activists have penetrated US society. Not mentioned but very important is how Christian Zionists and 'End Time' religionists, link Israel and their favourite myth of 'God's final battle of Armageddon' to Israel's preservation. It is a potent mix in which George Bush as a fervent Christian Fundamentalist End Times believer, plays a vital role.

The end result will be huge wars; the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and an unknown series of catastrophes. This will not benefit either Israel or the US. Although the US peace movement may seem paralysed, as do peace movements everywhere including New Zealand, they are not dead. Every day I get US notices of peace actions and Marches planned on Washington. Even Cindy Sheehan has come out of retirement to lead a march on Washington.

I hope they will become as active as they were in 2003, including activism to prevent Bush's planned war on Iran. This would be the biggest war and is very much agitated for by the Zionists in Israel and Zionist neocons in the USA. If it happens, with millions dead but somehow not triggering a World War III, people will wonder why they were so apathetic beforehand about this threat. Somehow they have been persuaded that they must not object to any of the war policies of the Zionists, for fear of being called anti-Semitic. Thus Israel is allowed to do as it pleases and more or less lead the US by the nose.

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US Middle East Wars: Social Opposition and Political Impotence

by James Petras, July 4, 2007

Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?

Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world's major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Teheran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?

Absence of a Peace Movement?

Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations' decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates – most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders' was that once elected the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.

Absence of a National Movement

As David Brooks (La Jornada July 2, 2007) correctly reported at the US Social forum there is no coherent national social movement in the US. Instead we have a collection of fragmented ‘identity groups' each embedded in narrow sets of (identity) interests, and totally incapable of building a national movement against the war. The proliferation of these sectarian ‘non-governmental' ‘identity' ‘groups' is based on their structure, financing and leadership. Many depend on private foundations and public agencies for their financing, which precludes them from taking political positions. At best they operate as ‘lobbies' simply pressuring the elite politicians of both parties. Their leaders depend on maintaining a separate existence in order to justify their salaries and secure future advances in government agencies.

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