Pro-peace lobby is needed

By Emad Omar

Jimmy Carter, the previous American president who received the Nobel Peace Prize and initiated putting human rights on the US agenda during his term, was the first to break the state of hostility between Israel and the Arabs with the first peace treaty in the history of this conflict. In 1978, the famous peace treaty between the Egyptians and the Israelis was a great opportunity for Israel to obtain recognition and end the state of war. Yet in spite of this, the pro-Israel lobby in US raised hell against Carter after publishing his latest book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid.” In the book, he told of the successive Israeli governments that have routinely undermined the peace process through obstinate aggressive and illegal occupation of the territories seized in 1967. The lobby’s reaction confirmed what Carter mentioned in his book and in a number of his press interviews, that “the Jewish general public is more eager for peace than their political leaders.”

The former American Secretary of the State, James Baker, was the engineer of the second reduction in hostility between Israel and Arab states. Baker sponsored the direct negotiations between Israel and neighboring Arab countries in 1991, giving Israel an historic opportunity to be recognized and accepted in the region. Despite that, a considerable wing of the lobby, during that time, led a campaign against him. They accused him of vilifying the Jews in a private meeting when he claimed that they do not vote for the Republicans. Recently, Baker, with his colleague Lee Hamilton, in the Bi-partisan Iraq study group, found that “the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he was attacked by this wing that seems careless about American interests in the region and sees only the strategic bi-lateral relation between Israel and US as its only concern.

Carter and Baker are among the most respected American politicians when it comes to American foreign policy. Their careers in diplomacy are behind them now and they can afford to tell the truth and focus on the real and possible solutions.

George Soros, a rich American Jew, experienced suffering in eastern Europe during the fascist reign and the Holocaust, which gave him extreme sensitivity towards the oppressed. As such, he supported black students in South Africa against the Apartheid regime and the dissident movements in Eastern Europe against the communist tolatarian regimes. “I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and deep concern for the survival of Israel,” Soros says. Lately, he criticized in an article published in the New York Review of Books, dated April 12, 2007, saying, “Recently, the pro-Israel lobby has gone on the offensive, accusing the so-called progressive critics of Israel’s policies of fomenting anti-Semitism and endangering the very existence of the Jewish state.” He warned that “There is the growing danger of a regional conflagration in which Israel and the US could well be on the losing side.” Supporters of the pro-Israel lobby attacked Soros by comparing his criticisms to the so-called blood libels directed against Jews in medieval Europe.

President of the esteemed Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas recently noted, “Diplomacy also needs to be revived in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is still the issue that most shapes (and radicalizes) public opinion in the region…The United States should articulate those principles it believes ought to constitute the elements of a final settlement, including the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines.” Pro-Israel lobby has publicly disagreed with Haas's conclusions.

One year ago, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, two prominent academics from Chicago and Harvard universities respectively, prepared a joint research paper about the lobby supporting Israel in America. In a documented and scientific way, they criticized the negative role played by the Israeli lobby today in American democratic life and in America’s foreign policy. In a joint essay published in the London Review of Books, they wrote that, “The Lobby’s influence has been bad for Israel. Its ability to persuade Washington to support an expansionist agenda has discouraged Israel from seizing opportunities – including a peace treaty with Syria and a prompt and full implementation of the Oslo Accords – that would have saved Israeli lives and shrunk the ranks of Palestinian extremists.”

As a result of this, they were targeted by a fierce campaign that made it almost impossible for both to publish their research in US.

The pro-Israel lobby in America that has attacked any sort of criticism of Israeli policies is like the father who exaggerates in protecting his children and spoils them, turning them into a troublemakers in the neighborhood and bringing their parents a bad reputation. This lobby’s policy contributes to maintaining the dangerous stagnation and status quo, the very problem King Abdullah II of Jordan warned of in his historical speech to the American Congress last March, when he said, “The status quo is pulling the region and the world towards greater danger... The cycle of crisis is spinning faster.”

The Arabs today are promoting their historic peace initiative, which is an historical opportunity, and the Israeli lobby in the US should push for a positive Israeli response in order to transform it into a regional peace plan instead of indulging in blindly defending the status quo and thus taking Israel, the region, and American interests into an endless hell that it may not recover from for many decades to come.

* Emad Omar is a conflict resolution and media expert based in Amman, Jordan.

Behind George Soros' Fight With AIPAC

April 16, 2007 (LPAC)--The April 12, 2007 issue of the New York Review of Books contains a lengthy article by mega-speculator and Democratic Party moneybags George Soros, attacking the Bush Administration, the neoconservatives, and AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) for sabotaging opportunities for a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the broader Middle East peace accord. Soros blames AIPAC for the U.S. government's refusal to recognize the new Palestinian Authority national unity government, and for blocking a Congressional demand that the President come to Congress before launching any attack on Iran.

Soros' carefully worded article focused on the urgent need to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: "I believe that a much-neeeded self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Some leaders of the Democratic Party have promised to bring about a change of direction but they cannot deliver on that promise until they are able to resist the dictates of AIPAC. Palestine is a place of critical importance," Soros continued, "where positive change is still possible. Iraq is largely beyond our control; but if we succeeded in settling the Palestinian problem we would be in a much better position to engage in negotiations with Iran and extricate ourselves from Iraq. The need for a peace settlement in Palestine is greater than ever. Both for the sake of Israel and the United States, it is highly desirable that the Saudi peace initiative should succeed; but AIPAC stands in the way. It continues to oppose dealing with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas."

Soros concludes with a fervent pitch for a debate within the American Jewish community on the future of the Middle East. "Whether the Democratic Party can liberate itself from AIPAC's influence is highly doubtful," he wrote. "Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it. But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies; that the critics of Israel's policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism. The opposite is the case.... A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it."

Sources familiar with the Soros-AIPAC controversy report that AIPAC has been involved in a smear campaign against Soros because, among other reasons, Soros' Open Society Fund has bankrolled the revival of Jewish communities in many areas of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, whereas AIPAC's backers believe that all of world Jewry should be living in Israel. Soros' views, expressed in the New York Review of Books piece, are also shared by a significant segment of the Israeli political establishment, and reflect a debate that is raging behind the scenes in the European Jewish community, according to the sources.

Soros Slams AIPAC

Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:19 p.m. EDT

The billionaire investor George Soros has added his voice to a heated but little-noticed debate over the role of Israel's powerful lobby in shaping Washington policy in a way critics say hurts U.S. national interests and stifles debate.

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Soros takes issue with "the pervasive influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)" in Washington and says the Bush administration's close ties with Israel are obstacles to a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Soros, who is Jewish but not often engaged in Israel affairs, echoed arguments that have fueled a passionate debate conducted largely in the rarefied world of academia, foreign policy think tanks and parts of the U.S. Jewish community.

"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism," wrote Soros. Politicians challenge it at their peril and dissenters risk personal vilification, he said.

AIPAC has consistently declined comment on such charges, but many of its supporters have been vocal in dismissing them. Historian Michael Oren, speaking at AIPAC's 2007 conference in March, said the group was not merely a lobby for Israel. "It is the embodiment of a conviction as old as this (American) nation itself that belief in the Jewish state is tantamount to belief in these United States," he said in a keynote speech.

The long-simmering debate bubbled to the surface a year ago, when two prominent academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a 12,500-word essay entitled "The Israel Lobby" and featuring the fiercest criticism of AIPAC since it was founded in 1953.

AIPAC now has more than 100,000 members and is rated one of the most influential special interest groups in the United States, its political clout comparable with such lobbies as the National Rifle Association.

Its annual conference in Washington attracts a Who's Who of American politics, both Republicans and Democrats.

UNWAVERING SUPPORT

Mearsheimer and Walt said the lobby had persuaded successive administrations to align themselves too closely with Israel.

"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but much of the rest of the world," they wrote.

No other lobby group has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy so far from the U.S. national interest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of Israel are essentially identical, they wrote.

Once considered an honest broker in the Middle East, the United States is now seen in much of the Arab world as an unquestioning backer of Israel, according to international opinion polls.

Peace moves have been at a near-standstill since the failure of Israeli-Palestinian talks in 2000 at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. The Bush administration, accused by the Arab world of relative neglect, has said it hopes to promote peace in its final two years despite the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

The two academics said that pressure from Israel and its lobby in Washington played an important role in President George W. Bush's decision to attack Iraq, an arch-enemy of Israel, in 2003.

Mearsheimer and Walt found no takers for their essay in the U.S. publishing world. When it was eventually published in the London Review of Books, they noted it would be hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing such a piece.

It has been drawing criticism that ranged from shoddy scholarship to anti-Semitism, chiefly from conservative fellow academics and political supporters of the present relationship between Washington and Israel.

In his contribution to the debate, Soros said: "A much-needed self-examination of American policy in the Middle East has started in this country; but it can't make much headway as long as AIPAC retains powerful influence in both the Democratic and Republican parties."

That influence is reflected by the fact that Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world.

GOING MAINSTREAM

Mearsheimer and Walt are now working on expanding their article into a book -- to be published in September by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The company has not commented on online reports that it paid the two authors a $750,000 advance and plans to print one million copies.

Another mainstream publisher, Simon and Schuster, already discovered that it not only is it possible to publish criticism of Israel but it can also be good for the bottom line.

Former President Jimmy Carter's book "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid" shot up the bestseller lists after its publication last November, stayed there for more than three months and is still selling well.

It had an initial print run of 300,000 copies and there are now 485,000 copies in print, said Victoria Meyer, a spokeswoman for Simon and Schuster.

Carter's book and its reference to apartheid provoked angry reactions -- more in the United States than in Israel, where leftists opposed to the occupation of the West Bank have been accusing the government of apartheid practices for years and where the word has lost its shock value.

In response to charges of bias and anti-Semitism, Carter said he wanted to provoke a discussion of issues debated routinely and freely in Israel but rarely in the United States.

"This reluctance to criticize any policies of the Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the American Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any significant contrary voices," he wrote in the Los Angeles Times during a tour to promote his book. "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine."

According to Oren, the pro-AIPAC historian, the Carter book and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper had the same "insidious thesis" and suffered from the same flaw -- ignoring oil as a driving element in U.S. policies on the Middle East.

© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved.

Soros Kicked AIPAC. - Obama Kicks Soros.- Let's Kick All Three

http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05252005.html

Board of Deputies of British Jews:
"Pragmatic" Nazi-Zionist Collaboration was OK
The Plot to Stigmatize "51 Documents" on Amazon.com
By LENNI BRENNER

================

"In this world, the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings."

Soros Kicked AIPAC. -

Obama Kicks Soros. -

Let's Kick All Three

By Lenni Brenner

BrennerL21@aol.com

Author of "51 Documents"

http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html

(Zionist Collaberation with NAZIS)

It is a sign of the changing political times that the 3/12 American

Israel Public Affairs Committee Washington conference received

much more candid journalistic treatment than AIPAC events

have ever received. The NY Times 3/14 report,

"Clinton and Obama Court Jewish Vote," got right to the point:

"As Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama compete

for Jewish donors and voters,

Mrs. Clinton is following a tried-and-true rule of hers from New York -

- support Israel to the last -- while Mr. Obama is trying

a more delicate strategy that hit some bumps this week."

Clinton never stops pandering to New York's ultra-right Zionists.

In an age when most young educated Jews escape from Judaism

and marry gentiles,

the 'Feminist' candidate is constantly in Sex-Segregated

Orthodox Jewish Synagogues, telling them of her great love of Israel,

which of course comes from her heart, not from their check books.

Her same ol' same ol' speech was remarked on,

but Obama is the new comet in the Democratic sky

and the Times focused on what was different

in his "I am pro-Israel" speech.

"Several Jewish conference-goers said they were concerned

by Mr. Obama's remark Sunday in Iowa where ... he said,

'Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people'....

Obama put the blame on the stalled peace efforts with Israel
and on the refusal of the Palestinian Govt. to renounce terrorism."

Obama represents Illinois, "the land of Lincoln."

But he models himself after the state's other great philosopher,

Al Capone. Chicago's Mafia leader proclaimed and proved that

"Kind words and a machine gun

will get you more than kind words alone."

Obama has a history of telling Arab-Americans that he

'feels the pain' of the Palestinians -

- while he supports giving billions in weapons to their oppressors.

The Times coverage of Obama was distinctive for the paper,

in giving competition "for Jewish donors and voters"

as the purpose of both leading wannabe Democratic candidates.

Since Hitler, for good and bad reasons, writing about Jewish political

money has been the great 'no-no' of America's capitalist media.

In 1991, I interviewed Harold Seneker, editor of the "Forbes 400"

issue of the magazine, for an article in the 2/11 Nation.

I estimated that Jews, about 2.5% of Americans,

were consistently circa 20% of the 400 richest Americans.

He wanted to write a story on it.

"Its a success, both for the Jews and capitalism."
But publisher Malcolm Forbes wouldn't let him.

He remembered the period after Hitler's 1933 victory inspired

American anti-Semitic propaganda about 'Jewish money.'

He agreed with Seneker's thesis, but didn't want responsibility for

even a slight possible rise in anti-Semitism resulting from an article.

The taboo's negative has been mass media silence about the

impact of Zionist money on US domestic and foreign policy since

Harry Truman, wanting Jewish campaign contributions, supported

Israel's creation in the run up to the 1948 presidential election.

But today many journalists, Jew and gentile, are critical of Israel

re the Palestinians, zealotry for Bush staying in Iraq and threats
of bombing Iran. For them, not talking about Jewish money means

not dealing with capitalist America's massive political corruption.

Thus the March 2 Forward, New York's prestigious

'Jewish community' weekly, had no hesitation in running

"How Many, How Much?," a graph estimating Jews as 24%

of the current Forbes 400 listing of the "nation's richest."

Most Jews aren't rich. And among the rich, the most famous

political donor, George Soros, isn't a Zionist.

(but he is a scoundrel who buys Halliburton Stock.)

The 3/23 Forward declared that he just dropped a political bomb

of "near-nuclear force" on American Zionism. The billionaire's
article in the post-dated 4/12 New York Review of Books,
http://nybooks.com/articles/20030, argues that the

US does Israel a disservice in ritually backing it:

"While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed,
criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed ....

One explanation is to be found in the pervasive influence of the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which strongly

affects both the Democratic and the Republican parties ....

Politicians challenge it at their peril because of

the lobby's ability to influence political contributions."

He long ago left Judaism behind, but he kept quiet about this

because he "did not want to provide fodder to the enemies of Israel."

But now its time for the American Jewish community

"to rein in the organization that claims to represent it."

Soros is a Tory reformist.

He funds narcotics law reformers and other worthy-issue groups.

But the Drug Policy Alliance, which got 30% of its funds from Soros,

welcomed Republican conventioneers to New York in 2004,

even as a massive anti-war march

protested against Bush and his party's war.

Now he wants Israel to negotiate with Hamas.

"Fortunately Saudi Arabia, whose position is also precarious,

has a genuine interest in promoting a settlement based on 2 states."

He wants the Saudis to lean on Hamas while the US pressures
Israel into negotiating itself out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Never mind that Saudia is a vicious despotism.

Ignore US arms to it and Israel. Forget that the American people

have absolutely no interest in arming either criminal government.

If Soros got his wishes fulfilled, the result would be "Bantustine,"

guarded by Israel and America's Arab satraps.

Many Americans also want Israel to deal with Hamas,

concerned for horrific Palestinian living conditions,

without sharing the billionaire's naive imperial mentality.

But nuking AIPAC was too much for Obama.

His campaign immediately announced that

"Mr. Soros is entitled to his opinions.

But on this issue, he and Senator Obama disagree.

The US and our allies are right to insist that Hamas -

- a terrorist organization dedicated to Israel's destruction -

- meet very basic conditions before being treated as a legitimate actor.

AIPAC is one of many voices that share this view."

Soros is modern proof of Sancho Panza's proverb.

He told Don Quixote that -

"in this world, the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings,"

and Soros gave the Democrats $28 million in 2004,

knowing his party to be demagogues pandering after Zionist cash,

vainly hoping that they would beat Bush.

The 3/21 Sun, New York's Zionist daily, was 'right on the money'

when it explained Obama's problem. Even if we presume

that he really is troubled by the Palestinians' wretched conditions.

"The Soros article puts Democrats in the awkward position

of choosing between Mr. Soros, a major funder of their causes,

and the pro-Israel lobby, whose members

are also active in campaign fund-raising."

Soros cash would buy Obama media ads in Democratic primaries.

But taking it means AIPAC billionaires buying ads for Clinton.

On the other hand, denouncing Soros

doesn't mean him running ads against Obama.

And, if he gets nominated, he can reasonably expect

Soros to fund him against the Republican.

Soros's guileless reformism has ended him up with less,

not more, influence in inner circles of his lesser evil.

Democrats hustling Zionist money reaches surreal proportions.

Party leaders rage against Jimmy Carter -- their own ex-president! -

- for denouncing Israeli apartheid. Obama distances himself

from his party's biggest funder. But now the party may have to pay

a liberal price for its money chasing. Liberal Jews and gentiles

see Obama as anti-Iraq war. But many dislike Israeli policies.

If anti-war lefts Keep the AIPAC/Soros/Obama affair in front of their eyes,
Obama dumping on Soros can operate to make them suspicious

of their party as a real anti-war lesser evil. It doesn't take a high tech

crystal ball to see Obama's crisis as our opportunity.

If we get our own act together, the anti-war movement can move out

of the wings and into the center of the America's political stage.

Soros has more money than educated anti-war Democrats but they

don't have more brains than him.For now, they would still vote for any

hawk the Democrats pick in 08, as a lesser evil to any Republican.

But if we start an internet convention, ASAP, to pick a genuine

anti-war presidential candidate by the end of 2007, committed

to running against the bipartisan hawk-parties, many will sign on

as they come to understand that the US military isn't going

to get out of the Middle East, whether the Democrats win or lose.

In 2000 and 2004 they worried that voting for Nader meant electing

Bush. But now Democrats run Congress, and they aren't kicking

Bush out of Iraq. Working for a Democratic victory as a lesser

anti-war evil is no longer axiomatic for such types.

In fact, if a left party came to life and drew enough votes from
the Democrats to elect a Republican, every pundit, right to left,

would understand this to mean that the anti-war movement

was growing in number and determination to end

all of America's wars, once and for all and forever.

Liberals voted Democrat in 1968 and 1972, fantasizing

thattheir party would end the Vietnam war. It lost.

But Nixon's Attorney General stared out of the White House

at a gigantic march. While most demonstrators were liberal Democrats,

he knew the parade was called and organized by Trotskyists,

Stalinists, left Black nationalists, unions, pacifists and such:

"It looks like the Russian revolution."

Determined Marxist organizing cadre, only a few thousand at most,

not Democratic politicians, mobilized the hundreds of thousands

that forced "bipartisan" Washington out of Indochina.

Nixon read the handwriting on the wall: Get out -

- or get more radical explosions at home.

We have a better and worse situation. Bush is losing the confidence

of millions of Americans and the Democrats aren't gaining it.

But neither are the divided anti-war demonstrators.

Nevertheless, we have the same task in 2007 and forever more:

We must build a massive united street movement

to get US imperialism out of the Middle East

and everywhere else, from now to eternity.

Henceforth, no one can talk intelligently about US

Middle Eastern policy without discussing AIPAC, Obama and Soros.

We must shout from the rooftops about Zionist campaign contribs.

Anti-Semitism is "a fire that has burned itself out" in modern America.

It won't spring up from the ashes if we take care.
Lecture audiences laugh when I rhetorically defend our politicians:

"Rich Zionists can't just walk in on a Democrat and bribe him!

No way!! They must sit in his waiting room

with all the other bribe-givers until its their turn!!!"

US politics is the story of unending corruption since New York's

Tammany Hall and other 19th century political machines, when Jews,

rich or poor, were a minuscule percentage of the population,

and Zionists were non-existent.

We cannot seriously educate the public about the 'legalized bribery'

of Zionist campaign contributions to the modern Republicratic

Washington machine without putting it in its matrix of general grafting.

We won't persuade most Americans to end

Zionist buying of our rulers, alone. Nor should we try,

when we certainly can mobilize millions who already want abolition

of private election contributions, with publicly funded elections

taking their place.

In context, documented exposure of Zionism's perfidious role

is not only legitimate, it is a perfect educational example

of America's government

of the rich, by the rich, for the rich,

which must perish from the earth.

***
Lenni Brenner is the author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and
editor of Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State:

Writings on Religion and Secularism. He blogs at

http://www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner,
and can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.

AIPAC Silences Soros

Soros Drops Out of AIPAC Counter-Lobby Project

March 23, 2007 at 12:09 am ·

George Soros, after writing a blistering NY Review of Books essay slamming AIPAC's pernicious influence on U.S. Mideast policy, disappointed liberal Jews by announcing he would not fund a project simmering over the past six months to create a Jewish counter-lobby to AIPAC:

Billionaire George Soros has no plans to put his money where his mouth is, a spokesman said Tuesday — two days after the philanthropist and political advocate assailed the pro-Israel lobby as a threat to Israeli and U.S. interests.

Rumors, rife since last October, that Soros would fund a dovish alternative to the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, quickened when Soros published a blistering attack on the lobby in the New York Review of Books this week. But Soros spokesman Michael Vachon rebutted the notion he would bankroll such an effort.

“He considered it,” said Vachon. “Many people wanted him to fund the effort. In the end he decided he should not be involved.

“On the other hand,” Vachon added, “Who can predict the future?”

That last statement is impossibly coy for me. I say, if you're in get in; if you're out, get out. Don't do a Mario Cuomo Hamlet soliloquy. There's already more than enough vacillation among key players in this conflict. We don't need more of the same from Soros.

I can't say that I'm surprised since on the day Soros' NYRB essay was published I asked an inside DC source what role the essay played in his strategy regarding the counter-lobby project. The reply came back: "He's out."

Soros' supposed reasoning for dropping out also isn't fully convincing:

Vachon cited Soros’ lack of prior involvement in Jewish life as the prime reason for his decision. The 76-year-old Jewish hedge fund manager and prominent donor to liberal and Democratic causes has not been a major player in Jewish affairs over his long career, he said.

“He feels he would not have the necessary standing in the community,” said Vachon. “Some people might even be put off by his involvement in such an effort.”

It is certainly true that Martin Peretz will use this argument against Soros and others as well. But since when do we act according to what our enemies say? Since when do they determine the agenda? I'm guessing that Soros himself doesn't feel the personal commitment to getting as deeply involved in internal Jewish communal politics as he would have to in order to really make the kind of impact that is necessary to take on AIPAC. I can't say as I fully blame him. How many times can one bear being called a Hitler sympathizer because at the age of 12 you pretended to be a Christian and were sheltered by a government official who confiscated Jewish property?

But still, Soros' withdrawal is terribly unfortunate. Many of us have that commitment but not the wherewithal to back it up. That's what Soros would've brought to the table.

All I can say is that I somehow hope the initiative continues and proves viable and that somehow Soros is persuaded that it is the right thing to do and that he gets on board. "Ride on the peace train," George.

I find Larry Cohler Esses' work in Jewish Week to be impeccably incisive and lacking in the cant one can find in Jewish media outlets like JTA. But this passage, which followed his list of liberal writers who'd recently attacked AIPAC seemed oddly snarky and churlish:

Still, the cottage industry of criticism in the public square by these writers raises oxymoronic questions about their claims of suppression.

Besides the imprecise use of the term oxymoronic without clearly noting what he was referring to, he seems to say that the plethora of criticism of AIPAC gives the lie to the liberal complaint that the Israel lobby suppresses speech it views as anti-Israel. What this ignores is the clear evidence of multiple recent incidents of intimidation to silence or punish Israel critics chronicled here at this blog (Judt, Beinin, Kushner, Khalidi, Massad, Cole, etc.) and elsewhere online. It also neglects the possible explanation that perhaps liberal writers and those media which publish them are becoming less intimidated by the lobby's reach and are showing some willingness to buck their wrath.

Filed under Mideast Peace, Politics & Society

israel lobby jewish week larry cohler esses soros withdraws from project opposing aipac

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Taming Leviathan

Lexington

Mar 15th 2007
From The Economist print edition

These are both the best of times and the worst of times for the American-Jewish lobby

Kevin Kallaugher

THIS week saw yet another reminder of the awesome power of “the lobby”. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) brought more than 6,000 activists to Washington for its annual policy conference. And they proceeded to live up to their critics' darkest fears.

They heard from the four most powerful people on Capitol Hill—Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner from the House, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell from the Senate—as well as the vice-president (who called his talk “The United States and Israel: United We Stand”) and sundry other power-brokers. Several first-division presidential candidates held receptions.

The display of muscle was almost equalled by the display of unnerving efficiency. There were booths for “congressional check-in”, booths for “delegate banquet troubleshooting”, and booths full of helpful young people. The only discordant note was sounded by a group of a dozen protesters—Orthodox Jews in beards, side-curls and heavy black coats—holding up signs saying “Stop AIPAC”, “Torah forbids Jews dictating foreign policy”, and “Judaism rejects the state of Israel”.

The lobbyists had every reason to feel proud of their work. Congress has more Jewish members than ever before: 30 in the House and a remarkable 13 in the Senate. (There are now more Jews in Congress than Episcopalians.) Both parties are competing with each other to be the “soundest” on Israel. About two-thirds of Americans hold a favourable view of the place.

Yet they have reason to feel a bit nervous, too. The Iraq debacle has produced a fierce backlash against pro-war hawks, of which AIPAC was certainly one. It has also encouraged serious people to ask awkward questions about America's alliance with Israel. And a growing number of people want to push against AIPAC. One pressure group, the Council for the National Interest—run by two retired congressmen, Paul Findley, a Republican, and James Abourezk, a Democrat—even bills itself as the anti-AIPAC. The Leviathan may be mightier than ever, but there are more and more Captain Ahabs trying to get their harpoons in.

Some of the most determined are Arab-Americans, who have been growing in numbers and influence for years—there are probably about 3.5m of them—and who have been in the eye of a political storm since September 11th 2001. They are a growing political force in northern Ohio and Michigan, and their institutions, such as the Arab American Institute and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have plenty of access to Middle Eastern money.

But so far their performance has been unimpressive. James Zogby has been promising a breakthrough for his Arab American Institute for 20 years. CAIR remains marginal. Arab-Americans are badly split between Christians (63%) and Muslims (24%). They have also been late in taking to politics. Between 1990 and 2004 Arab-Americans donated $788,968 to candidates and parties, compared with $56.8m from pro-Israeli groups.

AIPAC's ace in the hole is the idea that it represents Jewish interests in a country that is generally philo-Semitic. But liberal Jewish groups retort that it represents only a sliver of Jewish opinion. A number of more liberal groups have started to use their political muscle—groups such as the Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum. These groups scored a significant victory over AIPAC by persuading Congress to water down a particularly uncompromising bit of legislation, the Palestinian Anti-terrorism Act, which would have prevented any American contact with the Palestinian leadership. This accomplishment led to a flurry of speculation that George Soros might try to institutionalise this successful alliance by creating a liberal version of AIPAC.

It has yet to materialise. And it is doubtful whether Mr Soros, a left-wing Democrat who has little sympathy with Israel, would be the best patron for such an organisation. But the growing activism of liberal Jewish groups underlines a worrying fact for AIPAC: most Jews are fairly left-wing. Fully 77% of them think that the Iraq war was a mistake compared with 52% of all Americans. Eighty-seven per cent of Jews voted for the Democrats in 2006, and all but four of the Jews in Congress are Democrats.

Dissenting voices

An even bigger threat to AIPAC comes from the general climate of opinion. It is suddenly becoming possible for serious people—politicians and policymakers as well as academics—to ask hard questions about America's relationship with Israel. Is America pursuing its own interests in the Middle East, or Israel's? Should America tie itself so closely to the Israeli government's policies or should it forge other alliances?

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, worries that America is seen in the Middle East as “acting increasingly on behalf of Israel”. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has compared the situation in Palestine to segregation, and argued that there could “be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state”. Philip Zelikow, her former counsellor, argues, in diplomatic language, that the only way to create a viable coalition against terrorists that includes Europeans, moderate Arabs and Israelis, is a “sense that Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed”.

The biggest challenge facing AIPAC is how to deal with this changing climate. Its members have been admirably honest about their mission in life. They boast about passing more than a hundred bits of pro-Israel legislation a year. But they are too willing to close down the debate with explosive charges of anti-Israel bias when people ask whether this is a good thing. America needs an open debate about its role in the Middle East—and AIPAC needs to take a positive role in that debate if it is to remain such a mighty force in American politics.

Related
Inside America's powerful Israel lobby: AIPAC's summit included fiery evangelical oratory, adoration for Dick Cheney
Aipac Judge Orders Open Arguments on Government Proposal:
The defendants, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were indicted in 2005 on charges that, as lobbyists for Aipac, they passed classified information to an Israeli official and to reporters, violating American espionage law.
The attack on the USS Liberty
How to free the U.S. from AIPAC occupation?

Human Rights Watch Financier Soros buys Halliburton

The guy who wants to start a new Israel lobby. I smell Nobel Peace prize, Medal of Honor...
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Soros buys Halliburton

Tue, 02/27/2007 - 3:22pm.

Normally, I'm willing to overlook the hypocrisy of the liberal elite. If Al Gore and his Hollywood cronies want to fly around on gas-guzzling, atmosphere-polluting private jets while railing against global climate change, I'm willing to overlook it.

But the latest move by globe trotting, hyper-liberal billionaire George Soros borders on being too much. According to papers filed with the SEC, in the fourth quarter of 2006 Soros purchased nearly 2 million shares of ... hold your breath ... Halliburton. The Halliburton shares reportedly went for an average purchase price of $31.30 a share. That puts Soros' total investment in Halliburton at around $62.6 million, or about 2 percent of his total portfolio.

Soros, of course, is the dean of Democratic money giving. And Halliburton, of course, is the company that embodies everything the Democrats see as evil. Dick Cheney is its former chief, for goodness' sake. But Soros is also a man of contradictions. He supported campaign finance reform for years, only to declare that defeating President George W. Bush was the "central focus" of his life. To prove it, he sunk $24 million of his own "soft" money into the 2004 campaign, helping make that election one of the most divisive in modern history.

Soros' position in Halliburton is reported to be his first, which means he bought it with a full understanding of Halliburton's reputation. Soros may not see a problem with profiting from a company that has been accused of everything from sweatheart deals to cooking the books to serving U.S. troops lousy food in Iraq. The real question, however, is whether MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, and other organizations that have benefitted from Soros' charity will see a problem with accepting money earned off Halliburton shares?

Mike Boyer |

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Soros on U.S. war on Iraq: “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process”

The United States is now recognizing the errors it had made in Iraq, he said, adding, “To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future.” Mr. Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history, and contrasted that reluctance to Germany’s rejection of its Nazi-era past.

“America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany,” he said. “We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.”

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There's a lot of blogging going on regarding Soros' statements.

The neocons are crapping themselves over this.

Typical is:

"TNR'S LIEBERMAN-LOVING NEOCON OWNER" - Martin Peretz.

THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE.

Tyran-a-Soros

by Martin Peretz
Post date: 02.02.07
Issue date: 02.12.07

eorge Soros lunched with some reporters on Saturday at Davos. He talked about spending $600 million on civil society projects during the 1990s, then trying to cut back to $300 million, and how this year it will be between $450 and $500 million. His new projects aim, in Floyd Norris's words, to promote a "common European foreign policy" (read: an anti-American foreign policy) and also to study the integration (or so he thinks) of Muslims in eleven European cities. He included among his dicta a little slight at Bill and Melinda Gates, who "have chosen public health, which is like apple pie." And then, after saying the United States was now recognizing the errors it made in Iraq, he added this comment, as reported by Norris in The New York Times' online "Davos Diary": "To what extent it recognizes the mistake will determine its future." Soros said Turkey and Japan were still hurt by a reluctance to admit to dark parts of their history and contrasted that reluctance to Germany's rejection of its Nazi-era past. "America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain deNazification process."

No, you are not seeing things. He said de-Nazification. He is not saying, in the traditional manner of liberal alarmists, that the United States is now where Weimar Germany was. He is saying that the United States is now where Germany after Weimar was. Even for Davos, this was stupid. Actually, worse than stupid. There is a historical analysis, a moral claim, in Soros's word. He believes that the United States is now a Nazi country. Why else would we have to go through a "certain de-Nazification process"? I defy anybody to interpret the remark differently. The analogy between Bush's America and Hitler's Germany is not fleshed out, and one is left wondering how far he would take it. Is Bush like Hitler? If it is "de-Nazification" that we need, then in some sense Bush must be like Hitler. Was the invasion of Iraq like the invasion of Poland? Perhaps. The more one lingers over Soros's word, the more one's eyes pop from one's head. In the old days, the Amerika view of America was propagated by angry kids on their painful way to adulthood; now, it is propagated by the Maecenas of the Democratic Party.

But nobody seems to have noticed. I did not see Soros's canard reported in other places, and on the Times' website on the day I saw it there were only four comments. Imagine the outcry if a Republican moneybags--say, Richard Mellon Scaife--had declared that Hillary Clinton is a communist or that Bill Clinton's America had been in need of a certain de-Stalinization process. But I hear no outcry from Soros's congregation. People who were repelled by Bush's rather plausible notion of the "axis of evil" seem untroubled by Soros's imputation of even worse evil to Bush. Because Bush really is a fascist, isn't he? And Cheney, too; and Donald Rumsfeld, and Antonin Scalia, and even Joe Lieberman, right? Or so I fear too many liberals now believe. There seems to be a renaissance among liberals of the view that there are no enemies to the left. I hear no Democrats expressing embarrassment, or revulsion, at Soros's comment. Whether this silence is owed to their agreement or to their greed, it is outrageous.

But if Soros lives in a Nazi state, what does that make him? I still recall Karl Jaspers's devastating point, in The Question of German Guilt in 1947, that every German shares in the guilt of Hitlerism. Such guilt was not, in Jaspers's mind, an abstraction or a purely political matter. But Soros does not appear to accept any responsibility for the Nazi-like crimes he ascribes to the United States. Perhaps he thinks that, having contributed $18 million to elect John Kerry in 2004, he was an American hero, a dissident, a resistance fighter, the Grill Room's representative of the White Rose. And if, in 2008, Soros's gang comes to power, how will de-Nazification work? Whom shall we send to prison? Perhaps we should prevent everybody who voted or argued for the war from running for office. At the very least, the neocons must be brought to justice. (Maybe Ramsey Clark can represent them.)

hat makes Soros's remark even more twisted is that he himself experienced something of Nazism. He was 14 when the Nazis entered Budapest. On December 20, 1998, there appeared this exchange between Soros and Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes":

Kroft: "You're a Hungarian Jew ..."
Soros: "Mm-hmm."

Kroft: "... who escaped the Holocaust ..."

Soros: "Mm-hmm."

Kroft: "... by posing as a Christian."

Soros: "Right."

Kroft: "And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps."
Soros: "Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made."

Kroft: "In what way?"

Soros: "That one should think ahead. One should understand that--and anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a-- a very personal threat of evil."

Kroft: "My understanding is that you went ... went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews."

Soros: "Yes, that's right. Yes."

Kroft: "I mean, that's--that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?"

Soros: "Not, not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't ... you don't see the connection. But it was--it created no--no problem at all."

Kroft: "No feeling of guilt?"

Soros: "No."

Kroft: "For example, that, 'I'm Jewish, and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be these, I should be there.' None of that?"

Soros: "Well, of course, ... I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was--well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in the markets--that is I weren't there--of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would--would--would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the--whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the--I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt."

So this is the psychodrama that has been visited on American liberalism. We learn Soros never has nightmares. Had he been tried in a de-Nazification process for having been a young cog in the Hitlerite wheel, he would have felt that, since other people would have confiscated the same Jewish property and delivered the same deportation notices to the same doomed Jews, it was as if he hadn't done it himself. He sleeps well, while we sleep in Nazi America.

oros is ostentatiously indifferent to his own Jewishness. He is not a believer. He has no Jewish communal ties. He certainly isn't a Zionist. He told Connie Bruck in The New Yorker--testily, she recounted--that "I don't deny the Jews their right to a national existence--but I don't want to be part of it." But he has involved himself in the founding of an anti-aipac, more dovish Israel lobby. Suddenly, he wants to influence the character of a Jewish state about which he loudly cares nothing. Once again, he bears no responsibility. Perhaps his sense of his own purity also underwrites his heartlessness in business. As a big currency player in the world markets, Soros was at least partially responsible for the decline in the British pound.

Forget my differences with Soros's Jewishness. Call it shul politics. But the characterization of the United States under Bush as Nazi is much bigger, and more grave, than shul politics. It casts a shadow over U.S. politics. In the same conversation at Davos, Soros announced that he is supporting Senator Barack Obama, though he would also support Senator Hillary Clinton. So my question to both of those progressives is this: How, without any explanation or apology from him, will you take this man's money?

Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of The New Republic.

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The neocons are still pissed Soros founded and financed HRW called their favorite terrorists a cult.

The cult feeds the neocrazies allegations about Iran in Iraq just as Ahmad Chalabi used to with regard to the Baath regime in Iraq.

The other Israel lobby

A new alliance, including financier George Soros and former Bill Clinton advisor Jeremy Ben-Ami, aims to take on the powerful lobbyist group AIPAC -- and reshape U.S. policy.

By Gregory Levey

Dec. 19, 2006 This past June, on my last day working as a speechwriter for the Israeli government -- first at the United Nations and then in the prime minister's office -- I met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in his private office at the Israeli parliament to discuss a speech he had just given to the U.S. Congress. The speech, which I helped write, was largely about the future of U.S.-Israeli relations, and we discussed how it had gone over. Also at the meeting was a high-ranking official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and when we left the building together, he told me that the next day officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful lobbying group, would be visiting. He asked if I had any suggestions about what to tell them about how they could more effectively help Israel in Washington.

"Some people would say that maybe the best thing would be for them not to be so reflexively pro-Israel on every issue," I said.

He laughed. "Well, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon," he said. I suggested that such a rebalancing might be beneficial for all who were interested in supporting Israel, and he conceded that, yes, "just maybe" it would.

Many American Jews, it seems, have similar feelings. Eighty-seven percent of them voted Democratic in the recent midterms -- the highest number since 1994 -- belying the oft-repeated claim that the Bush administration's staunch support for Israel would move the traditionally Democratic Jewish vote toward the Republicans. The fact is that most American Jews, and many other American supporters of Israel, do not see eye-to-eye on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the most hawkish, knee-jerk Israel supporters in the U.S. government -- even if their presumed leadership, represented by AIPAC, often appears to do so. Moreover, AIPAC's influence in Washington may soon begin to decline, as a powerful new alliance of left-leaning friends of Israel has begun to emerge, with the express aim of reshaping U.S. strategy on the region's most intractable problem.

If the Bush administration decides to seriously reevaluate its strategy in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq Study Group's recent report -- and among its recommendations is prioritizing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- it will have to deal with a minefield of interest groups. That will surely include AIPAC, a juggernaut that the New York Times has called the "most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel."

In "The Israel Lobby," their highly controversial article earlier this year, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer argued that AIPAC, along with a very wide array of allies, pushes American foreign policy inflexibly in a pro-Israel direction. The article was criticized as simplistic, sloppy and above all reductive, but in its core suggestion that AIPAC often hinders the American government's ability to freely maneuver in the Middle East, it is difficult to argue with. As AIPAC itself proudly reports, the organization is "consistently ranked as the most influential foreign policy lobbying organization on Capitol Hill," and it uses this influence to very successfully push a viewpoint that its critics claim puts Israel's total military dominance above efforts to broker Middle East peace.

AIPAC suffered a relatively small but symbolic defeat this past year -- one that may prove to have been a turning point. Earlier in the year, AIPAC put all its muscle behind a congressional bill called the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which even some pro-Israel observers called "draconian." Going beyond even the Bush administration's own hard-line stance on the Hamas-led Palestinian government, it would have essentially cut off all American contact with any element of the Palestinian leadership, and hampered the U.S. government's ability to strengthen Palestinian moderates.

A group of small, left-leaning Jewish lobby groups, including the Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, banded together to battle AIPAC on the issue, and in the end were successful. A watered-down version of the bill was passed, with what they saw as the problematic language stripped away. An AIPAC official recently told me that AIPAC was satisfied with the softer bill's passage -- but it is quite clear that the incident represented a defeat for the organization.

It was, in fact, an impressive demonstration of what political cooperation and grass-roots advocacy can do. However, for these groups to replicate that success on a larger scale and with more of a substantive effect on U.S. foreign policy, there is a key missing element: real money.

That is where billionaire financier George Soros may come in, along with a group of other left-leaning philanthropists, many of them Jewish. In the relatively close-knit Middle East lobbying community, it is something of an open secret that this past September, Morton Halperin, who served in both the Nixon and Clinton administrations and is now director of U.S. advocacy for Soros' Open Society Institute, met with a group of lobbyists, political strategists and former politicians who are seeking to create a new well-funded, well-organized, left-leaning Israel lobby, as an alternative to AIPAC.

Several key figures in this group had been active in the effort to quash the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, and include Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former advisor to President Clinton, and Daniel Levy, a former special advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

The group's first meeting was exploratory and unfocused, according to several attendees who spoke with me. But in late October, Soros himself attended a follow-up meeting, along with liquor magnates Edgar and Charles Bronfman, former Democratic Rep. Mel Levine and others. The idea -- by this point labeled the "Soros Initiative" -- now began to gain traction and substance, with large sums of money being pledged by several parties. Several people involved have told me that there is now almost enough money firmly on the table to launch the new organization -- an eight-figure dollar amount, they say, and that's just for starters. Several people have told me that there is already work in progress to establish the organization's core structure and operations.

What exactly would the new organization do? According to Diane Balser, a board member of the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, one of the small left-wing groups involved in the discussions, the goal is clear: "Organizing systematically to affect U.S. foreign policy." Levy, the former Barak advisor, explained that the movement is "coming from a place where inside the mainstream Jewish community, people are increasingly confused about something that describes itself as pro-Israel, but is so out of sync with what they believe are good politics for the U.S. or Israel."

"The right-wing orientation in the community is losing people by the droves, particularly young people," M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, one of the main groups involved, added. "Most U.S. Jews support peace in the Middle East, and don't want to shoot down doves anytime they appear."

The point of the initiative, Levy told me, is not to "turn American policy against Israel. It is to reach out to groups of philanthropists to get better resources and better focus and to translate this into a political statement," so that members of Congress will know that they "will have cover if they seek to do what we and many in the American Jewish Community think is right."

There has been talk before about establishing an alternative to the status quo represented by AIPAC, but the added element of money from Soros and others could prove the pivotal difference now. There is also the possibility that a connection to Soros could itself be problematic. Soros has never been at all friendly to Israel, and his involvement might scare off others who are left-leaning but still support Israel. He is also one of the major funders of MoveOn.org and other left-wing causes, and Republican lawmakers, and even some centrist Democrats, may not want to be associated with him. An AIPAC insider repeatedly stressed to me that one reason this new group will never be able to compete with AIPAC is because AIPAC is bipartisan, while what he called the "Soros connection" shows that the new group will not be.

Levy, meanwhile, said that it is "a misnomer" even to call it the "Soros Initiative," because, as one of his allies said, it's not "Soros' baby. He doesn't want to be out front on it."

The AIPAC insider said that he believes the "Soros Initiative" is little more than a fundraising drive to raise money for some impoverished organizations that "have to define themselves in opposition to something." In fact, say those involved, a contentious issue in the discussions is exactly how much the new organization would allow itself to be seen as being in direct opposition to AIPAC. At least four of the players involved have told me that they intend to be an "alternative," but not an "opposition." Still, one of those present at the early meetings said that he sees his organization as "the anti-AIPAC." Levy, meanwhile, said simply that if "there are differences in policy, those will be expressed in one group advocating one thing and another advocating another thing." This would at least be an improvement, he said, over the past, when Israeli leaders who honestly sought to make peace "pulled their hair out because of the lack of support from the Jewish community in the United States."

I can attest from personal experience that Levy likely picked up this sense of frustration from working in the Israeli government. Once, when I was still a speechwriter for the Israeli government at the U.N., I sat in on a meeting with a group of right-leaning American Jewish lobbyists who were discussing how harshly to react to the International Court of Justice's ruling that Israel's separation barrier was illegal.

Afterward, a senior strategist for the Israeli government said to me, "See, people inside the Israeli government who are sincerely looking for peace have no choice but to wait. This prime minister is not going to bring peace. This ambassador is not going to bring peace." He added, "And those people that we just met are sure as hell not going to bring peace."

The Democrats' Not-So-Secret Plan?

The Democrats' Not-So-Secret Plan
By Cliff Kincaid | December 7, 2006

The plan is quite simple: increase the U.S. armed forces by 100,000, and use them and NATO for "collective security."

Some are saying that congressional Democrats came to power without a plan. In fact, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, architect of the Democratic victory, co-authored a book in 2006 called The Plan. Its subtitle: Big Ideas for America. One of them, in the critical field of foreign policy, is a "new strategy to win the war on terror" by reforming and strengthening multilateral institutions. The book cites Will Marshall's call for a doctrine of "progressive internationalism" and cites the work of Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton and author of the book, A New World Order.

The plan is quite simple: increase the U.S. armed forces by 100,000, and use them and NATO for "collective security." The U.N., meanwhile, will be assigned duties in the areas of "economic and social assistance" to the rest of the world.

The military phase is actually an old plan. It was originally proposed by George Soros, who wrote Toward a New World Order: The Future of NATO, back in 1993. He figured that NATO could take on the military responsibilities of the New World Order until the U.N. was ready to do the job.

Will Marshall's book, With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, includes a chapter by Slaughter, "Reinventing the United Nations," which urges fulfillment of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, which will cost the U.S. $845 billion, and creation of a "more globally inclusive NATO."

Not surprisingly, Slaughter cites the views of Senator Joseph Biden, incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who she notes has argued for "reorienting" the U.N. and Bretton Woods institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

He once wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal under the headline, "How I Learned to Love the New World Order." He has emerged as one of the strongest advocates of making NATO, once an anti-Communist alliance, into a military arm of the U.N. He also supported creation of the International Criminal Court.

Biden is a Vietnam War draft dodger and plagiarist who was forced out of the 1988 presidential race when his plagiarism was exposed. He supported the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), some of whose fighters were trained by Osama bin Laden. Radical Islamists are now poised to take over Kosovo and make it into an independent state, if the U.S. and the U.N. give it their final approval.