Netanyahu 29; Obama 25

The title of this post reports the score of 29 to 25, in a competition pitting Netanyahu against Obama in how many standing ovations each got recently from a joint session of Congress.

Here's another piece by Glenn Greenwald about our bought and paid for senators and congressmen siding with a foreign leader versus their own country's leader.

This is more than shameful. It's enormously distressing.

How has it happened that Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, has actually succeeded in capturing the allegiance of our elected officials, who have to know that that comes at the cost of lost prestige, influence and humiliation of our own President?

The answer of course is to follow the money trail. The Israel lobbies in this country, especially AIPAC, have successfully bought the allegiance of our elected officials, just as if they had been elected by the citizens of Israel. That has happened in spite of the reality that Jews comprise only about three or four percent of the American population. The portion of Jewish Americans
who condone this influence peddling are supporting people who behave like the Mafia, engaged in selling protection, rackateering, bribing and black mailing.

I blame not only AIPAC and the other Israel lobbies, but our own hypocritical, dishonest, integrity-poor politicians. They are behaving in a treason-like manner and have been doing so for longer than I'd like to admit.

And here's a Boston Globe article on how this conflict is playing out at a local level.

The result of this, of course, is that the current right wing Likud led Israel essentially has almost unchallenged influence on the foreign policy of the United States. This is an obscene state of affairs.

To say this openly, especially for public figures, is to run the risk of being at least ostracized publicly and worse, to risk losing their jobs and being tarred with the old but still effective anti-Semite brush.

I keep hoping that the relatively new J Street Jewish lobby will come to be seen as the more important influence on our foreign policy, especially with respect to our interactions with Israel. This moderate/progressive alliance of American Jews supports a two state solution to the Israel/Palestinian stand-off, is against illegal settlements, and for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

The obstacle to this happening is that J Street likely would have to outbid AIPAC in bribing American politicians. As long as our politicians have to raise $millions to pay for their never ending election campaigns, they will be vulnerable to being bought in exchange for unquestioned support of right wing Israeli behavior.

Leanderthal