The Israeli Lobby, Looking Forward and Back

John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt’s new book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy is seriously penetrating every level of readership. For the first time, its message is convincing many that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Unity Coalition For Israel, and various Christian Right groups effectively control most of our Congressmen and leaders in the executive branch of government. AIPAC’s clout is no longer viewed as limited to foreign policy and the Democratic party, where AIPAC’s influence was once concentrated. A new frightening scenario of domestic policy control is a growing and grim reality. In addition, other academicians are now writing about Zionist power in America, and asking how such a tiny foreign power can gain such a stranglehold over those we elect and the policies they administer. Many of the answers are found in this book. We are grateful to Mearsheimer and Walt for their cool and precise scholarship in the interest of giving the American people the hard truth.

Israel’s power over Congress, however, is far from new. We Hold These Truths attempted to expose it years ago.

This editor-author wrote the Publisher’s Introduction for attorney Andrew J. Hurley’s first book and masterpiece, One Nation Under Israel, in 1999.  Hurley not only outlined the power of the Israel Lobby during its formative years (1970-1990) but he placed it within the context of modern Jewish history and the warlike Likud Party, now back in control of Israel. Hurley’s brilliant book covers similar subject matter. His work is the prologue that proves The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Both should be read and reread.

This author’s 1999 introduction to Hurley’s lifelong work follows. The book is still in print and available from We Hold These Truths. [See the end of this article for our two-for-one offer. Why not give the extra copy to your pastor or church library.]

PUBLISHERS INTRODUCTON

“ONE NATION UNDER ISRAEL…”

 (By Charles E. Carlson c/c 1998)

Former United States Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated repeatedly in 1973, “Israel controls the (U.S.) Senate.” Senator James G. Abourezk of South Dakota told reporters at a Colorado Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner where he was a keynote speaker in 1977, “as a United States Senator, I have sworn an oath to uphold the government of the United States, but I never dreamed I would be required to swear allegiance to any other government.” He continued, “the United States is likely to become, if it has not already become, a captive state of its client state.” Senator Fulbright was driven from office by the very lobby he tried to expose, a testimony to the power of the Israeli lobby (Senator Abourezk served only one term).

Israeli influence extends to the Executive branch as well. On May 18, 1998, Vice President Al Gore told the 39^th Annual Policy Conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), “our commitment to the security of Israel is unconditional.” At the very hour when President William Jefferson Clinton faced an impeachment indictment, the Vice President pledged his allegiance, not to “one nation under God…” but to one nation under Israel.

Nor is the power of AIPAC limited to Democrats. Former President George Prescott Bush admitted in an interview on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s January 1999 documentary “ Fifty Years War: Israel & Arabs” that he had been threatened and intimidated when, prior to the 1992 election, he considered withholding a $10 billion dollar loan guaranty to the State of Israel. He described his intimidator as an agent of “AIPAC…a very powerful Israeli lobby”, Mr. Bush stated he was threatened with an “end to his political career”. However, his interview one even more incredible detail: later in 1992 President Bush quietly approved that very same loan.

“One Nation Under Israel” may be the first historically documented expose of the hijacking of the American Congress. It is a popular lament that, “Congress is out of control,” but nothing could be further from the truth. For as Author Andrew Hurley clearly explains, Congress is not under the control of its constituents but of a foreign power.

“One Nation Under Israel…” was first published in 1990 on the very threshold of the Gulf War. It was then entitled “Holocaust II, Saving Israel from Suicide.” In it, Author Hurley wrote a clear but unheard warning to the American people that they were losing control of their government. In spite of Hurley’s careful scholarship and the timely subject matter, the Israeli patriot control media, publishing houses, booksellers, and book reviewers blacklisted the book. Mr. Hurley’s warning rings out even more strongly today with the return to power of the more militant, Likud party under Benjamin Netanyahu, the crumbling peace process, and seemingly endless explosion of bombs, threats and famines in the Middle East.

Author Hurley is a historian. His book is a fascinating, scholarly history of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 by the United Nations’ partitioning of Palestine. He factually documents Israel’s subsequent expansion by war and encroachment into neighboring territories. The middle chapters describe the lobbying history of the State of Israel in the American Congress, and the last chapters are devoted to Hurley’s suggestion for a lasting place peace plan in the Middle East. It is only in this third section that the publisher’s views differ in some respects from those expressed by the author. These divergent views are available to readers in the Publisher’s Warmakers Series, timely reports exposing the hidden agenda of global subjugation via ruthlessly imposed World Government organizations masquerading as “peace promoting benefactors of mankind.”

In delivering this revelation to the American people, author Hurley states, “ As many writers and speakers have learned, it is virtually impossible for a non-Jewish author or speaker to write or say anything to do with Israel or Jewish people that cannot be interpreted by someone as veiled, if not blatant anti-Semitism.” Accordingly, Hurley’s book relies almost exclusively upon “well known and highly respected Israeli and Jewish writers, members or former members of the Israeli government, well known and generally accepted historians, and the objective news media.”

Mr. Hurley holds academic degrees in both political science and law. He has been an attorney for more than 40 years, during which he served time as an executive on the Board of Directors of Northern Pacific Railroad, Hunt Foods and Industries, the McCall Corporation, and the Norton Simon Foundation. He is now retired. Andrew Hurley wrote this remarkable book as a public service at the end of a long successful financial and law career.

Hurley’s unique vital message to the peoples of the entire world is that the American Congress has for decades been virtually under the control of a lobbying machine dominated by the State of Israel. Those who govern the State of Israel receive billions of dollars annually in U.S. Foreign Aid. Millions of these dollars are recycled into the American Israeli Public Affairs Council (AIPAC). This lobby, acting in concert with possibly as many as 100 American financed pro-Israeli PAC’s, then influences and intimidates a sufficient number of our elected Congressman, who provide more billions for Israel, and the cycle continues.

More expensive than the direct cost of foreign aid is the effect of the Israeli lobby’s influence over U.S. policy involving other countries and resultant human cost of warmaking over the last 50 years. Senator Charles Percy, a successor to Fulbright as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated in a public debate on 60 Minutes in 1988, “I finally reached the point where I saw our foreign policy totally turned with the Muslim world-2 billion people. Can Israel and the Prime Minister have more power than Congress?” Under Secretary of State and Ambassador to the United Nations, George Ball stated, “Practically every congressman and senator says his prayers to the AIPAC lobby…they have done an enormous job of corrupting the American democratic process.” Percy was awarded for objecting to massive foreign military aid to Israel by being driven from Congress by the Israeli Lobby.

Speaking from his California home, Author Hurley recently stated, “While the U.S. attacks Iraq for alleged violation of United Nation resolutions, Israel has violated almost every resolution of the U.N. for the past 25 years and remains in violation. Virtually every other nation in the U.N. has voted in support of the Palestinian position and against Israel’s confiscation of Arab lands. The U.S. has vetoed every such resolution of the U.N. concerning Israel.”

The powerful Israeli lobby does not depend entirely on a club to get its way with Congress, it also offers bait. The subtle, everyday workings of this “Israeli occupation” of Congress was shown through a routine back page news story in a Phoenix newspaper in July 1998, which revealed that second term Arizona Congressman John Shadegg and his wife accepted an, $8,400 expense paid trip to Israel the previous year. The trip was reported as an in-kind contribution from AIPAC. In truth, it was a quid pro quo donation from Israel. The junket story appeared coincidentally with an important May 24, 1998 foreign policy vote on a heavily Israeli lobbied bill, which contained severe economic sanctions against the central African Republic of Sudan, a country so remote that no standing congressman has ever visited it. But Sudan is one of Israel’s most outspoken critics and a growing influence in the Arab world due to its enormous undeveloped oil reserves. All but 41members of Congress voted for the sanctions. In 1994 AIPAC offered its posh Israel junket to all new members of Congress.

U.S. warmaking in the Middle East appears to have only one lasting beneficiary, the State of Israel. Israel’s military and political power has been magnified by the destruction of its neighbors and the enormous military aid it has received from the American taxpayer. Andrew Hurley’s magnificent book clearly explains why and how. At a Phoenix meeting of AIPAC in 1998 its spokesman boasted to the attendees that in a poll of 2,400 Congressman and staff members AIPAC has been voted the second most powerful lobby in Washington. But Andrew Hurley tells us AIPAC is being modest. He states, “You need not concern yourself about educating Congress about AIPAC, everyone of them knows it very well. It is the public who doesn’t know about it, and they need to know.” Your publisher agrees. “One Nation Under Israel . . . “ reveals a 51^st state with more power than the other 50 put together. And now . . . the reader will know.

Sadly, our friend Andrew Hurley died of cancer in 2004. The introduction is autographed by its author, Charles Carlson, in Hurley’s memory.