Are we fighting for Israel?

Great Debates
1

I found this topic in the ‘General Questions’ and considering the number of current threads in here about our new war, it should be considered here as well. The Q (in GQ) basically questions the validity of Rep. Moran’s assertion that war pressures are exerted by Jews in the US gov’t power structure.

It really surprises me that this question doesn’t seem to have much legs. When Moran candidly offers this opinion, why do we automatically accuse him of anti-Semitism and push him out of the sand box? Have 50 years of film, books, and Holocaust documentaries so effectively brainwashed us that we dare not consider such a simple question in a public forum? That we instead recoil in (programmed?) shock when a politician (or anyone else) candidly opines about the “role” of Jews in this conflict?

Consider in light of Moran’s non-politically correct assertion:

Why do we get questionable justifications from our Pres. and Secy. of State and why on this very board do we go through obfuscating and tortuous mental gymnastics with a few ad hominem attacks at Bush along the way and ignore the question: Does this whole war business simply boil down to one simple aim: protection of Israel?
Why do we care whether Iraq has WMD’s when so many other countries have them (including U.S.)? Who besides Israel is really threatened by Iraq’s WMD’s? Certainly not other nearby Arab nations, and really not U.S., considering Iraq’s lack of an ICBM system.

N. Korea has openly stated that they’re resuming they’re nuke program. So why aren’t we picking a fight with them? Possibly because they’re no immediate threat to Israel?

France, Russia, and Germany doth protest too much. While I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse these countries of yearning for another Holocaust, hasn’t history shown that none of these three are sufficiently sympathetic toward Israel to risk men, materiale, money, or perhaps even vested interests for its protection?

Haven’t on numerous occasions, Iraqi spokesmen and Bin-Laden specified Israel as their focus of aggression - without clear specification of the entire U.S.?

Is the U.S. indebted to Jews for its position of sole superpower in the world via the role of Jewish refugees in the timely development of atomic weaponry.

It’s surely no secret that the American media (film, books, magazines, music, news) and its rhetoric were strongly influenced if not controlled by Jews throughout the 2nd half of the 20th century.
Haven’t we heard for the last 12 years how this Greenspan guy is so great and how he can, with just a little fiddling, make or break a sitting President?

Don’t American Jews represent an important voting bloc with high turn-out? Witness the election of the junior Senator from NY hingeing on Jewish votes and the shenanigans required to get them.

This is not to be missconstrued as a harangue against Jews or Israel. I am simply saying that I can understand the interpretation that ours is not purely a “fight for our freedoms, liberties, and way of life as Americans”, but is instead a fight for Israel. If this is so I’d like to ask the question: Should we?

If the answer is ‘yes, we should’, then why do we protest? Israel doesn’t.

2

Pretty simple really. Israel is the only democracy in the region. We democracies stick together. We believe that our way of life is the best there is
and naturally we think the rest of the world should have the same freedoms.
Saddam’s track record shows he is on a Hitler path. In hindsight we should have taken Hitler out as he rose to power. Who knew?
Same with the Soviet Union. Patton had the right idea.
Fortunately, the big one was never dropped so we squeezed by without destroying life as we know it
Anyway, after 9-11 the U.S. decided that a pro-active stance in regards to our
national defense, our national interests (which extend way beyond our borders) would be best.
I guess you don’t recall that right after 9-11 a list of other possible threats included N.Korea.
We’ll get to them eventually.
Right now, Iraq.
We American’s have the right to go about our daily business without worrying whether the floor will explode out from under us.
Israel is a fellow democracy, an ally in a world full of regimes and dictatorships.
No one has the right to pick our friends for us.
And certainly no one has the right to kill us for our choices.

3

My impression on the Israel issue that it is one of extreme sensitivity in the US, much like the “race” issue. This is why I think you may tend to find debate pushed away, and outrage expressed over any questions raised. As a non-US person, it appears to me similar to the current accusations of “unpatriotism” that many of you are suffering should you ever question the Bush administration, or the rightness/wrongness of his stance on Iraq.

Re North Korea: Pyongyang almost certainly has nukes, so invading them is likely to be nuclear war. It’s a bigger, harder deal. Baghdad does not have nukes. Plus going against NK is - according to some analysts - also going up against the whole of China.

I don’t buy the “Israel is the only democracy” argument, because I don’t believe the US - or pretty much any other western power - is that unselfish and idealistic in its foreign policy.

4

“It’s surely no secret that the American media (film, books, magazines, music, news) and its rhetoric were strongly influenced if not controlled by Jews throughout the 2nd half of the 20th century.”
Um, I’m sorry. WHAT?

5

My eyes were glazing over, too.

But putting all the nonsense aside, jimpatro got it pretty close, I think. Israel is a functioning democracy with an effective opposition, with full suffrage for women and a free press. Just for those alone, they’re unique in the Middle East (though some of the smaller nations like Qatar are eging toward reform and Turkey is struggling along) and should get financial and military aid from the U.S.

6

We also control Horizontal and Vertical.

In fact, chigger, you will now dance the macarena while humming “Flight Of The Bumblebee”. Blindfolded.

must…use…power…wisely…

7

No, not really. Bin Laden included the US and its citizens in his ‘fatwa’ in 1998.

8

Beagle, that is true, for Bin Laden Israel is only a peripheral issue, which he didn’ even mention for many years, it is clear that the bulk of his hatred is for the United States rather than Israel.

9

Believe it or not, chigger, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been exposed as a fraud and a hoax (http://skepdic.com/protocols.html).

10

The fact that stuff like this is even considered seriously by anyone gets my paranoia-o-meter running.

Jewish conspiracy theories redux. Doesn’t beating that particular dead horse ever get tiring?

11

**

And when flat-earthers talk about how the earth is flat and all the scientific data is faked, don’t we automatically accuse them of quackery and push them out of the sand-box?

**

Have 50 years of space exploration, sattelite data and shuttle flights effectively brainwashed us that we dare not considr such a simple question as a flat earth in a public forum?

**

That we instead recoil in (programmed?) disgust whenever a “scientist” (or anyone else) candidly opines about the “role” of NASA and the government in hiding the truth about a flat earth?

Zev Steinhardt

12

The thing I don’t get about the whole ‘Jews control America’ thing is that it’s obvious which social/ethnic grouping controls (well exerts the most influence on) America- upper class WASP males.

13

Also the holocaust is one of the most single significant events in history and it’s greatest tradegy, is really that unbelivable that there is a great volume of work on it.

14

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers *
**My eyes were glazing over, too.
Sorry about the glazing. This also happens to the non-scientifically inclined students in my classes when I try to explain some of the more complex aspects of science. So I’ll try a different approach.

It takes little effort to find out that there are and have been a large number of Jewish people at various levels of influence (editors, producers, directors, authors, owners) in the American media establishment. I am not claiming that this or any particular group CONTROLS the media, but advanced intellectual accuity is not required to understand that persons in position of control (like those listed above) make some decision(s) about the product’s content. And, it ought to be plainly clear that “speech” in all its forms can and do influence attitude and action, otherwise there would be no political correctness or teevee ads.

However, the reason I raised the OP in the first place is not to drag up this so-called “dead horse” as one reply put it, but to ask the question as to whether or not the motivation for this war on our (U.S.) part is the protection of Israel. Many of the posts on this thread confirm this to be the case, as I have long suspected it to be, and none seem to deny it.

So, if this action boils down to the protection of Israel (which I am neither arguing for or against), then why doesn’t the Bush administration just come out and admit as much? And why, when a congressman makes this claim, does he get beaten down to groveling apologies and kicked into the borrow-ditch of p.c. wreckage?

The central complaint of the anti-war movement is that no good reason has been established. And quite frankly, although I have been a Bush supporter, I too grow weary of the “scary monsters” justification with, as some would argue, flimsy or non existent evidence.

And, to another question, if this is a protection mission for Israel, then can we reasonably project that the “millions” of war protestors do not care for Israel’s safety or are they just sadly misinformed? If the latter, then where is the campaign to inform them?

15

I do not think you can logically support that America would put a quarter of a million men and women in harms way, risk billions of dollars of military equipment, use up billions in ordinance and would go so far as to jeopardize international standing and strain relations with allies new and old just because there is a “strong jewish voting influence”.

Heres a hint. There is a large number of jews in charge of the media. They dont have an organized agenda. Christians dont like being told what to do and Bush is a bible thumping born again christian as is most of his high level advisers, generals and staff.

That having been said, Israel has the most to benefit from this war besides the US and Britain. It will lose a dangerous enemy, a supporter of Palestine and an influencial political force that is opposed to its existance and it could very well achieve this without risk to live or property. However, other than security for its nation it will not benefit financially, politically or morally.

Indeed, after the last shot is fired, the entire region has a lot to gain from removing Saddam from power. When Saddam is dead, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will all breathe a collective sigh of relief, albeit privately.

16

You’re absolutely right; as everyone knows, the only reason we support Israel is because of their vast oil reserves.

I see. And it probably takes as little effort to find out how many non-Jewish people there were at various levels of influence, and since you’re an objective scientist, you probably also tallied the number of Jewish people who are absolute schlemiels ( my cousin Joe, for instance) and factored this in.

How did you arrive at this quantitative revelation? Did you open up a copy of People magazine and count the number of people whose last names ended in “-berg” or “-stein?”

17

Don’t even dream of suggesting I’m not intelligent or sophisticated enough to understand the point you were trying to make. You just buried it in a technicolour stream of bullshit so that it was hard for me to summon the interest (not the intelligence) in debating you point-by-point.

One of your basic premises (Jews control or heavily influence the media) is suspect, calling into question all your conclusions.

I wouldn’t accept a bad premise in a scientific discussion, either.

18

Let’s suggest that while there is probably not a secret Jewish mafia controlling the US media, they are certainly better represented in positions of authority in the US media than Arabic people, muslim people, and certainly Palestinian people are.

Now it may well be - and I sincerely hope so - that every one of those Jewish people is just as impartial as non-Jewish people when it comes to world events. But we cannnot deny that they have a stronger presence in the US media - as do white people or christians compared to blacks or hindus - that arabs or muslims.

The issue is whether this is significant or not. Likely, if these media leaders are educated open minded, impartial, and professional, it is no issue what their background, race, or religion is.

19

Aside from the media-conspiracy thing, of which I’m not committed either way, I think the OP hit every valid point.

Pro-Zionist Jews are an important voting block and important to fundraising, and that’s better than controlling the media. That’s real political power, power that can be wielded whether or not specific people are in power. Our alliance with Israel has been an absolute disaster, led to thousands of American deaths, and now this war is a direct result of it. Nail, meet head.

20

Jews are very well-represented in the media in the US much higher than their 2% of the general population. Many of them are professional enough to report and comment on the Arab-Israeli issue in an objective manner. Some of them though , particularly among the commentators, are hysterical, pro-Israeli types; eg. Martin Peretz, Mort Zuckerman, Charles Krauthammer etc. A few non-Jews also fit this description of course.

As for whether this war is being fought for Israel, IMO it’s not the primary reason but it’s there in the background. In general because of the influence of the Jewish lobby, the US does consider the interests of Israel seriously when formulating its ME policy. But there are other important players: the oil lobby, the Christian Right, the big bureaucracies in the US government like the CIA and State Department as well as various governments around the world.