OLD NEWS?  NEW NEWS? WITH ISRAEL, IT’S ALL THE SAME

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Israeli Spies Killed, Wounded in Attack in Iraq | Farsnews Agency

This article first appeared in the American Herald Tribune, a publication twice shut down by the US government

Zionist Noses.  According to the September 12, 2019  edition of the American political journal POLITICO, Israel “likely” placed cell phone surveillance devices around the White House and other “sensitive locations” in Washington, D.C.  The publication based it’s statement on three, unnamed, former senior U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.  (The story, however, first broke in June 2018 in a variety of news outlets which noted that the devices, called “sting rays”, had been detected the previous year.)

Sting rays are not fish but are, as Politico described them, devices “which mimic regular cell towers to fool cell phones into giving them their locations and identity information. Formally called international mobile subscriber identity-catchers or IMSI-catchers, they also can capture the contents of calls and data use.”  American police departments use them and such use has occasioned a series of lawsuits alleging violations of the 1st and 4th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights, regarding freedom of speech and warrantless searches.

Israeli officials, as is normally the case, denied any involvement.  Donald Trump also denigrated the “alleged” Israeli activities, saying “My relationship with Israel has been great…Anything is possible but I don’t believe it.”

Why?  Donald Triumph has long been known to be less than security-conscious.  “POLITICO reported in May 2018 that the president often used an insufficiently secured cell phone to communicate with friends and confidants. The New York Times subsequently reported in October 2018 that “Chinese spies are often listening” to Trump’s cell phone calls, prompting the president to slam the story as “so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it.””  According to its sources, Trump’s phone, POLITICO said, has been hardened against intrusion.

But Isn’t This Old News?  Israel has been spying on the United States government, American businesses, and public officials for decades.  In the 1950s, former ambassador Andrew Kilgore once noted, Israel had planted microphones in the American embassy in Tel Aviv.

“As Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told Newsweek [in May 2014], old habits are hard to break: Zionists were dispatching spies to America before there even was an Israel, to gather money and materials for the cause and later the fledgling state. Key components for Israel’s nuclear bombs were clandestinely obtained here. “They’ve found creative and inventive ways,” Pillar said, to get what they want.”

Then there was Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy civilian employee.  He had been arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for passing suitcases full of highly-classified documents to Israeli intelligence.  After much Zionist pressure, his life term was commuted to 30 years and he was released.

In the first half of 2001, “Israeli art students” attempting to sell their wares turned up at government offices in 40 U.S. cities.  They were attempting to penetrate the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. government agencies, including those with addresses not known to the public.  Salon, a news and opinion website, wrote in May 2002:  “According to one account, some 140 Israeli nationals were detained or arrested between March 2001 and Sept. 11, 2001.  Many of them were deported. According to the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service], the deportations resulted from violations of student visas that forbade the Israelis from working in the United States… After the Sept. 11 attacks, many more young Israelis — 60, according to one AP dispatch and other reports — were detained and deported.”

The journalist Wayne Madsen has written extensively about the “art students” and this writer can attest that they are still operating.  A few years ago, he once visited the Pentagon City Mall (near the iconic military headquarters). A sales girl, from a cart hawking perfume, approached him, asking if he had ever been to her country, Israel.

Yet, for obvious reasons, there has been little investigation of this by the Zionist-controlled U.S. media.

It Gets More Technical.  As Christopher Ketcham wrote in a September 2008 issue of CounterPunch, “Since the late 1990s, federal agents have reported systemic communications security breaches at the Department of Justice, FBI, DEA, the State Department, and the White House.  Several of the alleged breaches, these agents say, can be traced to two hi-tech [Israeli] communications companies, Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys), and Amdocs Ltd., that respectively provide major wiretap and phone billing/record-keeping software contracts for the U.S. government.  Together, Verint and Amdocs form part of the backbone of the government’s domestic intelligence surveillance technology.”

The article went on to quote Philip Giraldi, former CIA counterterrorism and counterintelligence officer.  He said “This is par for the course in the history of Israeli penetrations in the U.S.”   Quoting annual FBI reports called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage”, Giraldi noted Israel is second only to China in stealing U.S. business secrets.  One FBI account added “Israel has an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States. These collection activities are primarily directed at obtaining information on military systems and advanced computing applications that can be used in Israel’s sizable armaments industry.”  A key Israeli method, warns the FBI report, is computer intrusion.

And In The End?  Do we force Israel to divest itself of its spies and its companies deeply involved in espionage in the United States?  Do we block visas for Israelis to enter this country?  Do we end American financial support of Israel:  $10 million a day/365 days a year?  Plus tax-free purchase of Israeli bonds?  Plus sales of Israeli-controlled consumer goods like Tribe and Sabra Hummus or Ahava beauty products?

Would government officials with knowledge of Israeli espionage activities admit their failures and resign?  Would the American press cover this?  In a country that passes laws to condemn criticism of Israel?  Or of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS).  Not hardly.

The United States of America is completely under the control of Israel and its Zionists.  Things will not change until Israel does.

  1. Michael Springmann is a former U.S. State Department official having served as a diplomat in the Foreign Service with postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He previously authored, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider’s View, recounting his experiences observing officials granting travel visas to unqualified individuals. Additionally, he penned Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?  Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, an analysis of the alien wave sweeping the Continent. He currently practices law in the Washington D.C. Area. He is a frequent commentator on Arab, Russian, and Iranian news programs.

 

 

ZIONIST PUPPETS

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Meet the militantly pro-Israel Trump official directing the economic war on Iran - The Grayzone

Sigal Pearl Mandelker

This article first appeared in the American Herald Tribune, a publication twice shut down by the U.S. government.

Puppets? There are puppets in the theater and there are puppets in politics. Here is one tale of a Zionist puppet in the U.S. government. Where she came from, we know. Where she is now, we know. How she got there, we don’t know. Did she have a godfather, did she have a rabbi, did she have a puppet master? We don’t know. What we do know is that she moved very quickly and very smoothly through very sensitive areas in the American government.

Sigal Pearl Mandelker is currently Undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. This position oversees, inter alia, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). OFAC places sanctions on organizations and individuals.  FinCEN has access to the U.S. National Security Agency’s Signals Intelligence Network (i.e., they read other peoples’ mail, be it email, faxes, telephone calls, or use of communications apps such as Signal or Telegram). Although confirmed by the American Senate on June 21, 2017, Mandelker was born and grew up in Israel.

When and how she came to America, we don’t know. Possibly, it was the result of marriage to Steven D. Capozzola, once connected to the right-wing Breitbart organization.

Career track. After law school at the University of Pennsylvania, Mandelker became a law clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. After that, and a clerkship with Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, she moved to national security positions at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice. Prior to her confirmation as Undersecretary, she was a partner at the law firm of Proskauer Rose LLP, with a personal income of more than $1 million per annum.

But, let’s focus on the Treasury job.  The first office head of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI), created during the George W. Bush administration, was Stuart Levey, followed by David Cohen, succeeded by Adam Szubin, and now Sigal P. Mandelker. Those names are not Buddhist names nor are they good Muslim names.

However, Philip Giraldi, former CIA counterterrorism officer, pegged them as Israeli operatives. He noted that Levey worked secretly with the Apartheid Entity’s government and its cats-paws in the U.S., such as AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Giraldi went on to say that Cohen and other OTFI counterterrorism job holders were both Jews and Zionists. Giraldi added that Adam Szubin, who took the position in 2015, was replaced by Mandelker in 2017.  Conceivably, Giraldi commented, Mandelker could still be an Israeli citizen. (“Israel’s Fifth Column: Exercising Control From Inside the Government.” If Americans Knew Blog.)

Giraldi went on to say that OTFI heads like Mandelker have targeted individuals and organizations that Israel and its American lobbyists have deemed enemies.  One example might be the New Horizon Conference, which, during the past 6 years, brought together government officials, journalists, politicians, activists, and thinkers from abroad for meetings with Iranian politicians, clerics, and reporters.

According to a knowledgeable D.C. attorney, Mandelker is hard at work on imposing sanctions and is deeply involved with the efforts of people and organizations seeking to free themselves from such restrictions.

We drew a blank. In an effort to clarify Mandelker’s background, the author called a number of Zionist organizations and asked them to help fill in the gaps in the Undersecretary’s history. For example, how did she get to the United States and move so quickly through its government?  Moreover, this writer was curious about her statements at the May 2017 Senate confirmation hearings and asked about them. Before the banking committee, Mandelker went into great detail about how her parents, before they migrated to Israel, had endured great hardship hiding from the Nazis, and how they inculcated their values into her in Israel. However, she said little about her own qualifications for the position, other than recounting the list of her previous jobs.

This correspondent dialed AIPAC, which didn’t return his message. He telephoned the Anti-Defamation League and B’nai Brith, to no avail. When he rang up the FDD, Toby Dershowitz, their government affairs contact, told him Mandelker was doing a great job and she didn’t know or care what her ethnic origin was.

Digging deeper, this writer emailed the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and asked if an Israeli would lose his citizenship if he became an American citizen. The embassy did not reply. Then, the author emailed the Israeli Foreign Ministry with the same question. Again, there was no response.

In exasperation, this correspondent filed a complaint with the Treasury Department’s Inspector General. He noted Mandelker’s Israeli citizenship, her strong support of Zionist policy, and questioned her loyalty to the United States. In particular, this writer emphasized her lies about the New Horizon Conference: that it was anti-Semitic (with Arabs and Jews in attendance); that it denied the Holocaust (which it didn’t); and that it recruited spies for Iranian intelligence (no one approached this writer). No answer has been forthcoming.

What are they hiding? Simple. The Undersecretary’s godfathers, her rabbis, her puppet masters! She, like many dual-national, dual loyalty Zionists, has been carefully picked and carefully groomed and carefully placed in positions of great influence by Israel and Israeli agents.

God is said to protect fools, drunkards, and the United States of America. However, given Zionists of Influence, He has His hands full.

  1. Michael Springmann is a former U.S. State Department official having served as a diplomat in the Foreign Service with postings in Germany, India, and Saudi Arabia. He previously authored, Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World: An Insider’s View recounting his experiences observing officials granting travel visas to unqualified individuals. Additionally, he penned Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos?  Merkel’s Migrant Bomb, an analysis of the alien wave sweeping the Continent. He currently practices law in the Washington D.C. Area.

WHAT HATH NETANYAHU WROUGHT? The Israel & UAE Agreememt

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This was originally published in The American Herald Tribune, now shut down by the US government.

 

Is God Really All Powerful? If So, Why Does He Rely On The U.S., Israel & The UAE To Do Satan’s Work? According to the Washington Post, Binyamin Netanyahu has produced a minor miracle. As the paper noted August 14, “…it unites Israel with a powerful Persian Gulf ally of Washington that shares the view of Iran as an enemy.”  The journal, notably anti-Trump, nevertheless, quoted him as saying “By uniting two of America’s closest and most capable partners in the region–something which [was] said could not be done–this deal is a significant step towards building a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous Middle East…”

But, buried farther on in the story, all was not sweetness and light. The Palestinian Authority (PA), nominally governing the Occupied West Bank, “condemned the accord as betrayal.” Furthermore, it termed the agreement as “aggression against the Palestinian people.” Speaking the naked truth, the PA said that neither the UAE nor any other party had a right to speak on behalf of Palestine. It then withdrew its ambassador to the UAE in protest.           (The Post did not mention Hamas’ sharply negative reaction until farther on, even though it governs all Gaza.)

The journal went on to quote UAE officials as saying, rather improbably, that they established relations with Israel to forestall Netanyahu’s plans to annex the West Bank [in reality, what was left of it] to give the Palestinians a homeland. (They had had a homeland; the Zionists took it away from them in 1948.)   Surprisingly, the paper noted that UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash believed the two-state “solution” had been threatened and they had to act.

Notably, the paper quoted Netanyahu as saying “The deal was struck. Without Israel having to give up territory it has effectively controlled for more than 50 years of conflict with the Palestinians.” Turning to Jared Kushner, Trump’s Zionist son-in-law and leader of his Middle East peace effort, the Post wrote that “the larger aim of Kushner’s plan[s]was always for Israel to forge new economic partnerships with many of its neighbors, especially Sunni Arab states that share the U.S. and Israeli view of Iran as an enemy.” (Does this mean Saudi Arabia and the Gulf statelets, some of the most authoritarian, repressive, medieval monarchies in the world?)

In the article, Kushner opined on the Palestinian outrage (without any opposing comment or background on the matter) that “they (the Palestinians) have a fairly predictable response that we’ve seen time and time again to all types of things that help make their peoples’ lives better…”

The paper’s columnist David Ignatius, ever the supporter of the American intelligence services, concludes his August 14 column with “Trump’s surprise announcement…[is] welcome news for Israel, the Arabs, and the United States.”

Welcome News? Hussein Ibish, Ph.D., once the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s spokesman and now a flack for the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C. subtitled one of his many articles for Bloomberg News that the agreement meant “ Joy in Cairo, relief in Amman, anger in Ankara and alarm in Tehran.“  In it, he writes:

Riyadh has also clearly been interested in strengthening relations with Israel as a counter to Iran, and will pay close attention to how the UAE fares in the coming months.

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s point-man on the Middle East, has suggested that another Arab country will follow the UAE’s lead. There’s speculation that Bahrain and Oman will make announcements soon. Manama generally defers to Riyadh on defense and foreign policy issues, so any Bahraini normalization with Israel would serve as a trial balloon for Saudi Arabia as well. But such a Saudi move may only come after the end of the rule of King Salman, who seems committed to the API. [Arab Peace Initiative.]

Formal diplomatic ties with Israel would embellish Oman’s credentials as a regional mediator and a friend to all. Muscat maintains close relations with Iran, but also welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on an official visit in 2018. Oman has, in typically understated fashion, welcomed the announcement.

All three of these Gulf Arab countries have quietly been increasing relations with Israel anyway, so normalization is merely a matter of formalizing what already exists.

Turkey has trade relations with Israel and the UAE but is at cross purposes with them on most issues. Erdogan routinely lambasts Israel over Palestine, and will not take kindly to recent Israeli moves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

…[B]ehind Tehran’s bluster will be grave concern that two of its more active and potent adversaries in the region have come together under Trump’s offices. Increased military and intelligence cooperation between the U.S., Israel and the UAE would indeed be dangerous for the Islamic Republic.

More Riders On The Train To Nowhere.  Ibish asserts that Egypt likes the agreement because “it potentially strengthens the Egyptian-Emirati hand in Libya against Turkish-supported forces for control of the country.” (Cf. ahtribune.com/world/north-africa-south-west-asia/4349-turkey-changing-the-middle-east.html). Continuing, he claims that Morocco might be another country looking for an opening with Israel. Dr. Ibish goes on to say “The biggest winner outside of the three parties directly involved in the agreement is surely Jordan, because it allows at least the hope of a Palestinian state in the future. (Yes, he still believes in the long-dead “two-state solution”.

Let’s Throw Some Cold Water On The Celebratory Candles And Let The Ants Eat The Cake. The whole affair is not anything like Richard Nixon’s diplomatic recognition of China.  The Middle Kingdom occupied and still occupies a good portion of the earth’s surface and has a huge chunk of its population.           Israel is an illegitimate and artificial construct, built on theft of Palestinian land and existing only because of the United States. The American taxpayer, gives, without likely knowing it, $10 million a day to Apartheid Israel. Then, there are U.S. military sales. In fiscal year 2019, the U.S. provided $3.8 billion in foreign military aid to Israel. Israel also benefits from about $8 billion of loan guarantees. From illegal outposts to academic research, from legal aid for Jewish terrorists to yeshivas, the tens of millions of dollars that U.S. non-profits send each year to the colonies support all sorts of activities in Jewish enclaves across the West Bank. (U.S. donors to these charities can claim tax deductions.)

Then there are Israeli products like Sabra and Tribe hummus.   They occupy prominent positions on the shelves of American grocery stores. Sabra, half-owned by the Strauss Company, an Israeli firm, and Pepsi Cola, donates food packages to the Israeli army’s infamous Golani Brigade, noted for its war crimes against Palestinians. The company has more than 60% of the American market and sells more than $1 billion a year. (It’s repatriation of profits to Israel is unknown.) Tribe hummus is owned by an Israeli firm, Orem, a key supporter and partner of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The Fund continues its work of appropriating land for Jews and evacuating Palestinians.  Tribe’s U.S. sales are much smaller than Sabra’s.

The Real Goal. Yes, the agreement might be good, in the short term, for the UAE economy and for Israel’s. It might even help the other riders on the train. However, the aim of the agreement, as has been clear from the Washington Post and Hussein Ibish, and others who parrot the party line, is the complete and utter destruction of Iran–its government, its foreign policy, and its people.

The idea is to split the Arab and Muslim worlds, to the advantage of Zionist Israel and the United States. Look at what has been done to date. The UAE, with its military aid to war-torn Libya and its invasion of Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is not a peace-loving state. And it is hostile to Iran, as are the other Persian Gulf statelets, notably Bahrain, headquarters of the American 5th Fleet. Saudi Arabia, which believes itself to be the real leader of the region, the real leader of the Arab nations, and the real leader of Islam, has been holding not-so-secret talks with Israel and is considering joining the agreement. Other countries are as well.

The U.S. has nuclear weapons. Israel does.  Saudi Arabia is interested in them–and has the means to deliver them using its Chinese-made Silkworm Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles. The UAE has one nuclear reactor in operation and plans to build four more. How long would it take to produce enough fissionable material to make a bomb? And which country might be their target?

Iran has, in the past, made numerous statements that the countries of the region should cooperate in maintaining peace and order and security–not outsiders. Yet, what do we have? The United States, from halfway around the world, working with Israel, a land of European immigrants, against the Islamic Republic of Iran and the stability of the entire Middle East. The guide might be trade and diplomatic relations, but, in reality, what we have is a Trojan Horse, designed to unleash major trouble on the area.

And the Palestinians? As usual, they get absolutely nothing out of any agreement in which Israel, the United States, and any Arab country are involved. There is always the smear that they are ungrateful for any “help” given them. They should accept the “two-state solution”, settling on whatever bit of land outsiders might want to give them. They should give up on the right of return for the nearly 7 million exiled Palestinians. Since 1967, the UN has been trying to get Apartheid Israel out of lands it seized in the 6-Day War.  Since the 1978 Camp David Agreements, the U.S. has been “trying” to get the Israelis to withdraw from land it’s taken over the years. And since 1948, no one, absolutely no one, other than the people involved and Iran, has recognized the invasion and occupation of Palestine.

Arabs have told this writer that their people only cooperate if they see an advantage in doing so.  To date, what little collaboration there is has only worked to their detriment–if they could but see it. The Israeli Yinon Plan, to make the Apartheid Entity strong by dividing and weakening the Arab neighbors, seems to have been forgotten. This wretched agreement among Israel, the UAE, and the United States is simply a diplomatic and economic elaboration of that concept. And, so far, it seems to be working.

 

 

 

Israel: America's Oldest Enemy, America's Greatest Debtor

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Really? Yes, really.

Enemy At The Gate

Throughout most of Israel’s existence, it has mounted terrorist attacks on United States government property and United States citizens. Here are some examples:

• EGYPT. On July 14, 1954, Israeli intelligence officials exploded fire bombs at U.S. Information Service libraries and U.S. Consulate offices in Cairo and Alexandria. The object was to poison relations between the United States and Egypt by depicting Muslims as being responsible. The Egyptian government caught and tried a number of Egyptian Jews involved in the attacks. Eventually, due to great outcry, Pinhas Lavon, Israeli Defense Minister resigned.

• U.S.S. LIBERTY Eastern Mediterranean . On June 8,1967, after nine hours of regular reconnaissance of the National Security Agency’s signals intelligence ship, Israeli armed forces, with full knowledge of the Liberty’s nationality, attacked the vessel without warning. The Liberty, steaming in international waters, suffered 34 Americans murdered, 174 maliciously wounded out of the ship’s 294-man complement. The $40 million ship was deemed unsalvageable and sold for scrap.

• RACHEL CORRIE–Rafah, Palestine. On March 16, 2003, an Israeli soldier drove a 54-ton Caterpillar bulldozer over the 23-year old U.S. citizen—twice–crushing her skull, chest, and spine. She had been attempting to protect the home of a Palestinian family from being demolished. The peace activist, wearing a blaze orange jacket with reflective stripes, was clearly visible to the soldier driving the equipment. While her parents were attempting to seek justice for the murder of their daughter, an Israeli military leader told the Haifa court that “During war there are no civilians.” As part of a policy that is still in effect, the Israeli military and police do not investigate complaints of attacks against civilians in “closed military zones.”

• MAVI MARMARA, Eastern Mediterranean. On May 31, 2010, Israeli armed forces stormed the six ships of the Palestine aid flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Movement, an activist organization with members from numerous countries. During the assault in international waters, Zionist commandos murdered nine people, including U.S. citizen Fulkan Dogan—shot five times in the head, legs, and back. The Israelis then falsely imprisoned 629 activists from the ships, including former U.S. ambassador Edward L. Peck.

• EMILY HENOCHOWICZ—Qalandia Checkpoint, Palestine. On May 31, 2010, Israeli soldiers blinded the 21-year-old U.S. artist, activist, and Jew. She had been standing at the front of a demonstration protesting the Mavi Marmara attack. She was waving a Turkish flag, when soldiers deliberately fired a tear-gas canister at her face, putting out an eye and breaking her jaw and cheekbone.

Debtor

Israel’s existence depends on massive U.S. transfers of its citizen’s money, along with tax-free handovers of funds to alleged Zionist charities. This fuels Israel’s war machine. Profits from the sales of Israeli products in the United States often go to colonists occupying Palestinian lands (and using their resources) or to units of the Israeli “Defense” Force.

Because of this, Israeli citizens have Universal Health Care while American citizens don’t.
Here are the highlights:

• Total U.S. aid to Israel since 1949 exceeds $138 billion.

• Military aid: $3 billion annually since 2007. Twenty-five percent of this can be spent on Israeli-manufactured weapons and military equipment, which are then exported for Israel’s profit.

• Israel also receives loan guarantees and free or reduced cost military equipment from the United States. Israel gets funding from American Defense Department appropriations for projects such as its Iron Dome missile shield. (The U.S. Congress has forgiven all past loans to Israel.)

• U.S. Foreign Military Funding (FMF) provides 25% of Israel’s defense budget. (FMF finances procurement of defense articles and services by foreign countries.)

• More than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds go to Israel annually in the form of $1 billion in private tax-deductible donations and $500 million in purchases of Israeli bonds.

• Total U.S. aid to Israel is approximately one-third of the American foreign-aid budget, even though Israel comprises just .001 percent of the world’s population and already has one of the world’s higher per capita incomes. With that being about $14,000, Israel ranks as the sixteenth wealthiest country in the world; Israelis enjoy a higher per capita income than oil-rich Saudi Arabia and are only slightly less well-off than most Western European countries.

• Buying products like Sabra hummus and Sodastream helps fund Israel’s military control over Palestinians. Some companies have factories located in one of the 125 officially recognized colonies in occupied Palestine, which are illegal under international law. Other companies contribute to the maintenance of the occupation through cooperation with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose main goal is to protect illegal “settlements” and exercise dominion over the lives of millions of Palestinians.

• Sabra hummus is partly owned by an Israeli company named the Strauss Group. It gives an elite IDF unit, the Golani Brigade, a variety of food products for their training or missions, and provides personal care packages for each soldier. (The Golani Brigade played a key role in the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09 during “Operation Cast Lead”. That action was infamous for its murders, war crimes, and human rights violations against Palestinians.)

• Tribe hummus and Ahava beauty products all have ties to the Israeli government. Tribe uses its U.S. profits to help that government strip Palestinians of their land and keep them from leasing it back. Ahava is 37% owned by Hamashbir Holdings, tied to the Orad Group, producing electronic detection systems for use on the West Bank separation barrier.

CONCLUSION: In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, they note that “When Israel was founded, in 1948, U.S. policy makers did not consider it a strategic asset…American policy makers recognized that embracing Israel too closely would undermine the U.S. position elsewhere in the Middle East. President Truman’s decision to support the UN partition plan and to recognize Israel was based [in part] on…an awareness that recognition was backed by many American Jews and would therefore yield domestic political benefits.”

To date, the only benefits yielded in the close relationship between the United States and Israel have been to Israel’s advantage. It appears as if only detriments have come to the United States, its citizens, and to the Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East.

But what of the future?

Considering the steady rightward drift of the Israeli government, its focus on Greater Israel, and its oppression of Palestinians and others, can we consider the ruling elites there to be stable? If they are not, should the United States continue to transfer such large sums of money to them, funding Israeli wars and state-sponsored terrorism?

Does America have any responsibility for Israel’s actions? If so, whose is it? Our political leadership? The average voter? The Religious Right? The Mainstream Media for only telling part of the story?

Since Israel possesses an unknown number of weapons of mass destruction, what happens if one or two “go missing”? Suppose some carefully-cultivated fanatics acquire and detonate a stray bomb or two? Will there be a finger-pointing tarantella or general war?

Shouldn’t someone start asking hard questions instead of bankrolling a proven enemy?